


For Want of a Nail

by RelenaDuo



Series: Yo dawg [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Gen, Harry Potter Has a Twin, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry grows up in an orphanage, Humor, I'm just playing around with tropes, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo 2020, Obscurial Harry Potter, Obscurials (Harry Potter), Orphanage, Slytherin Harry Potter, The Potters Live, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Tropes, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27504166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RelenaDuo/pseuds/RelenaDuo
Summary: A story about The-Boy-Who-Lived, his connection to a certain Horcrux, his obscurial, his twin brother and his life in the house of Slytherin.My entry for this year's NaNoWriMo. Still a WIP, but I feel confident that I'll reach the goal.This is me playing around with some popular tropes that the HP fandom has
Relationships: none so far
Series: Yo dawg [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020582
Comments: 82
Kudos: 457





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So y’all gotta know that this isn’t just some shit that’s hanging on, say, some character slipping in a banana peel and causing the whole story to split into AU. Not at all.

On a fateful night of Halloween several silhouettes could be discerned with some difficulty, their dark cloaks camouflaging them as they walked in the shadows of the streets towards Godric’s Hallow. In the lead was none other than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord, Lord Voldemort or Tom Marvolo Riddle, the last one much to the man’s embarrassment.

Upon arriving at their desired destination Voldemort ordered the Death Eaters to surround the property and enter it from all sides when given the signal. Voldemort went to stand at the front door, quickly fixed his robes to maximize their dramatic billowing when he broke into the house and sent out some sparks from his wand, signalling his men to break into the house.

Glass shattered and wood splintered as all the windows and doors broke inwards, the house instantly swarmed by people in black cloaks. All the ruckus drowned out the terrified screaming of Lily and James Potter, both huddling together and pulling out their wands.

Voldemort marched in, his robes billowing dramatically with each stride he took. He smirked evilly at his future victims, lifted his wand and-

One of his Death Eaters slipped as he stepped out of the kitchen, fell on his ass and fired out a curse that hit James and Lily Potter square on both their chests. The Potters collapsed.

Silence descended on the home.

The Death Eater that had slipped sat trembling on the floor, unable to even move from fright.

Voldemort inhaled, nostrils flaring in a way that marred his handsome face, “I’ll be dealing with you – _later_ ”, he hissed and strode up the stairs, where he knew from their informant that the Potter twins slept.

The Death Eater whimpered, even as he still sat on the floor.

Seconds later they heard wood splinter as their Lord broke down yet another door, followed by a scream and then-

BOOM!

The house rocked to its very foundations, the top of the house evidently exploding in a flash of bright green light. The Death Eaters ran. Even the poor one that had fallen down before was out of one of the doors before the whole house started to cave in at parts.

* * *

Alarms had begun to go off the second Voldemort had broken down the front door. The whole of Wizarding Great Britain soon knew that the Potters were under attack and rallied to aid them.

Albus Dumbledore arrived seconds after the Aurors and witnessed them chase after Sirius Black, who in turn was chasing what looked to be Peter Pettigrew, threatening to murder him.

Unfortunately unable to split himself in two Dumbledore raced to the Potter’s house, which was swarming with Aurors digging through what was left of the house. Dumbledore himself joined them and after a few minutes little Jimmy Potter was recovered, screaming his lungs out and with a massive cut that slashed across his little face. Dumbledore took the babe into his arms and felt powerful magic surrounding the child and immediately knew this was the Chosen One.

“We found the other one!”, one of the Aurors shouted a minute later, little Harry Potter in his arms who was also wailing for all that he was worth. Dumbledore looked over and saw that little Harry was fine, mostly dirty with some dust and a tiny cut on his forehead.

“Oh wonderful!”, said Dumbledore, Jimmy would probably have been traumatized later in life if he discovered that he’s lost a twin brother and Dumbledore wasn’t sure how this would affect him as the Chosen One. Better that he never found out.

After about another hour the comatose forms of Lily and James Potter were found underneath the ruins of their house. They had been hit with some unknown spell and suffered extensive injuries so it was unsure if they would ever wake up. All the healers at St. Mungo’s examined each one of the Potters as the Aurors explained the circumstances in which they had been found in and by the end of the night the whole world knew of Jimmy Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, the Vanquisher of Lord Voldemort.

The next morning Minister Millicent Bagnold was at St. Mungos to start to proceedings to admit Jimmy and Harry Potter into the care of Wizard family since Sirius Black was no longer an option.

“They have family”, stressed Dumbledore, insisting upon the twins being delivered to live with the Dursleys, Lily’s last remaining family.

“I’m not leaving the Vanquisher of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to a family of Muggles! No matter how closely they are related! The-Boy-Who-Lived deserves to be with people who will nurture his extraordinary abilities until he is ready to leave for Hogwarts.”

“What Jimmy needs is to live with what little remains of his family!”

“He needs to be nurtured!”

Several days later they both stood at the Ministry of Magic’s Department of Magical law Enforcement, ready to start the trial for who was to obtain custody of the Potter twins.

The overseeing judge was Frederick Weatherhead, a decorated yet ancient wizard.

“Is that Albus Dumbledore?”, asked Frederick to his undersecretary.

“Yes sir, do you know him?”, asked the young man.

“Do I know him”, Frederick chucked darkly, “He used to kick me when we were little. Him and fucking Aberforth would never give up the chance to bully me. ‘Weatherhead, Weatherhead, what’s the weather like today’ they’d say, the bastards.”

“That sounds awful sir, I never knew he was like that when he was a child”, said the young undersecretary.

“Well, young, yeah I suppose. He was like four years old and it was mostly Aberforth, but still, fuck him. What’s he here for anyway?”

The young undersecretary blinked, “Um, he’s here about the custody of the Potter Twins. He wants both to go live with one Petunia Dursley, who is a Muggle. The Minister insists that The-Boy-Who-Lived needs to grow up in a Wizarding home”.

“Hmm”, mused Frederick.

That night Harry Potter was delivered to Petunia Dursley in a basket on her doorstep and Jimmy Potter was handed to Augusta Longbottom in front of a room of Ministry officials, all smiling for the photographs. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all still the set up, the heart of the story starts in chapter three, which I'll upload tomorrow

Harry was all of four years old and very sad.

This seemed to describe him most of the time nowadays. He’d levitated one of Dudley’s brownies to himself a few weeks ago and Aunt Petunia had screamed when she saw it. Uncle Vernon had soon taken his belt to Harry in order to beat the freakishness out of him. Except it hadn’t helped cause when Harry was locked in his cupboard he’d unlocked himself somehow and gone to the kitchen to get some food. What he hadn’t known was that Uncle Vernon had been at the kitchen at that hour and had exploded in fury when he saw Harry. He’d screamed and beaten Harry black and blue that day, but by the next day Harry had mostly healed.

Things hadn’t gotten better since then. Both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia screamed at him and beat him daily to ensure they got rid of the freakishness. Harry wished with his whole heart that it worked. It didn’t matter that it had made him feel special at first, now it only made him feel miserable. He really wished he could just be normal.

One day it all changed. Harry was being beaten by Uncle Vernon when his Uncle decided to drag him back to his cupboard but then he suddenly slipped and fell on top of Harry.

For one second Harry felt like he was being suffocated and then the next he was everywhere and he was flying and he was wrecking the kitchen as he distantly heard his relatives screaming.

Hours later Harry wakes up in his cupboard under the stairs sore and hungry. He’s still trying to remember what happened when he hears a voice.

‘Where is this?’, the voice demanded angrily.

“Wh-who are you?”, asked Harry, disoriented and confused, “Where are you sir? I can’t see you.”

‘What is this place? Why can’t I-who are _you_?’

“I-I-“, Harry licked his parched lips, but it didn’t help much, his mouth was as dry as the desert.

‘Speak up! What is the meaning of this! WHY AM I HERE?!’

The voice sounded angry and Harry was getting more and more anxious, “I don’t understand!”, he wailed, “Where are you?”, he asked as he looked around his dark cupboard.

‘WHAT DO YOU-‘, the voice suddenly halted, ‘What in Merlin’s name is _that_?!’, the man screamed as Harry felt something within him fight to get out and destroy everything.

“No no no no no”, Harry chanted as he suddenly felt himself being enveloped by something and then rattling around his cupboard wildly until the door gave way. Once outside his cupboard Harry calmed down and slowly opened his eyes and found that he was in the hallway, his ruined cupboard right in front of him.

“What?”, he gasped.

‘Oh no’, the voice said, sounding beyond frightened, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no. This can’t be right, this wasn’t supposed to happen, this isn’t how it was supposed to go!’

“Sir, are you okay?”, asked Harry tentatively.

‘Nothing is alright!’, the voice shouted and Harry tried to cringe away but found that he couldn’t and he wasn’t able to tell where the voice came from either.

“BOY!”, Harry jumped as he heard his Uncle come thundering down the stairs. Harry backed all the way back to the wall, yet Uncle Vernon never came close to him.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW WITH YOUR FREAKISHNESS?!?!”, screeched Uncle Vernon, spittle flying everywhere.

‘Who the hell is that?!’, demanded the voice.

“Th-that’s my Uncle sir, maybe you can tell him what happened. I don’t understand”, said Harry, hoping that maybe this stranger could help him.

“WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?!”

‘Shut up you oaf, do you have no idea what this child is?! Do you want to die?!’

“ANSWER ME BOY!”, shouted Uncle Vernon when Harry didn’t answer him.

“Can’t you hear him?”, asked Harry in a small voice.

“HEAR WHO?!”

‘Oh for Merlin’s sake just what I needed!’, the voice fumed.

Uncle Vernon made no sign of hearing him. Harry shrank even further into himself, “The mister, he’s pretty upset, he was shouting earlier, that’s why that happened”, Harry pointed at what used to be his cupboard.

“He’s lost his mind!”, shouted Aunt Petunia, still standing at the top of the staircase.

“A mad freak”, Uncle Vernon spat and looked at the cupboard, “No”, he shook his head, “A mad monster! MONSTER!”, he screeched at Harry.

Harry felt tears fall down his cheeks and swallowed a sob.

‘What a vile creature’, the voice said. Harry didn’t know what those words meant, but he was strangely comforted by them.

“We need to get rid of it Pet”, Uncle Vernon said to Aunt Petunia, “We can’t have it in the same house as Dudley, look at what its capable of!”

Aunt Petunia looked doubtful for a second and then she nodded, “Yes, yes you’re right! Lets drop him off at a church, they’ll know what to do with him.”

‘He doesn’t need a fucking exorcism!’, the voice shouted.

“Yes, yes, one in London, very far from here”, Uncle Vernon nodded and went to grab his keys.

“Out!”, he shouted when he opened the front door and Harry quickly scrambled out, still trembling in fear.

Harry was similarly commanded to get into the backseat of the car and then Uncle Vernon drove off at top speed. A few hours later they were in front of a small rundown church somewhere in London. The voice had been cursing at Vernon the whole way over and Harry had started to think that he might like the voice a little bit. He was already treating Harry better than his relatives ever did.

Uncle Vernon opened the car door for Harry and dragged him to the front of the church, “Now you stay here”, he hissed and walked back to his car. Once inside he rolled down his window and shouted, “BURN IN HELL!”, before he sped off, leaving Harry behind.

Harry sniffled and hugged himself.

‘Ugh, why me’, the voice mumbled, ‘Look’, he began, clearly addressing Harry now, ‘You’re better off without them. They’re trash and I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to be under their care.’

Harry sniffled again and hugged himself tighter, “Thank you mister.”

‘Whatever.’

“Who are you though? And why can’t I see you? And where are you?”

The voice gave a longsuffering sigh.

‘I am Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard to ever walk this earth’, he said, ‘You are magic too. I can sense you’ve been trying very, very, _very_ hard to deny this, but you must accept it. The sooner the better.’

Harry blinked, “How do you know this mister?”

Another sigh, ‘Trust me, I can _see_.’

Harry looked down at his feet. He didn’t have any shoes or socks on and it was freezing outside.

“What if I don’t wanna?”, Harry mumbled, wriggling his toes on the cold concrete.

‘Then we’ll both die, most likely.’

Harry startled, sniffled and started to silently sob.

‘Oh fuck, uh’, the voice cursed, ‘Look, its not like that – _fuck_ – please calm down!’, he pleaded desperately.

“Why?”, Harry sobbed.

‘Because the Obscurus inside you doesn’t like you getting upset!’, hissed the voice.

“What?”, Harry was confused. And cold. Very cold.

‘Shit its growling’, the voice cursed and Harry thought he could hear it too. It sounded almost like an angry dog.

“Sounds like a dog”, he said.

‘Its not a dog, trust me.’

“Sounds like one”, Harry sniffed, “I always wanted a pet, but Aunt Petunia would never let me”, Harry suddenly perked up, “But now I’m not with them anymore so I can have this!”

‘An Obscurus isn’t a freaking pet!’

“An Obus- Osu –Oscu”, Harry bit his lower lip, “Imma name him Spot.”

‘What? No!’

Just that second the church front door opened, revealing an elderly priest who was very shocked to find Harry there.

Harry was quickly bundled up in a blanked while the police arrived and upon their arrival he was interviewed and asked about his relatives that abandoned him. Harry was able to tell them his aunt, uncle and cousin’s names, but not their last names, nor his own last name.

By the time the sun was up Harry was in the office of an orphanage where they were processing him as Harold Green.

“Just for the paperwork hun, as soon as we can figure out what’s up with your folks you’ll get your real surname back”, the lady explained.

“Okay”, Harry murmured as he fiddled with his new shoes.

‘Nothing about this is okay’, groused Voldemort. He’d been giving a steady line of commentary since everything started. Harry greatly appreciated him. He wondered if this was how it felt to have a friend.

“Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be fine”, Harry told him.

“Who are you talking to hun?”, the lady asked.

Harry figured she looked nicer than Uncle Vernon so it was safe to tell her, “To Volleymol, he’s my friend, but nobody can see him cause he’s a wizard.”

The lady smiled brightly at him, “Sure thing hun”, she said and went back to work at her desk.

‘That’s-that’s not why you can’t see me’, said Voldemort, sounding tired. ‘And my name isn’t Volleymol or whatever, I am the Dark Lord Voldemort!’

“Kay”, hummed Harry, “But I’m not good with names, but I’ll get better at yours, cause you’re my first friend.”

‘I am a Dark Lord that will rule over this whole planet!’

“Kay.”

Voldemort gave a groan of impatience, but Harry figured it was okay since he wasn’t lashing out at him like Uncle Vernon normally would.

Time went by. The Dursleys were never found. Harry become officially Harold Green. Voldemort moped and grouched on a daily basis.

Time flew.

One day James and Lily Potter woke up from their coma and discovered one of their sons had been missing for two years with nobody the wiser.

Yet no amount of tears shed and Ministry officials fired brought back their son and so time simply kept flying by.

Harry was ten years and eight months old when he was dropped off at the orphanage after his fifth and latest failed adoption.

‘Well, fuck them’, groused Voldemort, ‘No future Dark Lord should grow up in a house full of filthy Muggles anyway.’

“Not turning into a Dark Lord Vol”, said Harry as he skipped into the orphanage, “Hi Nick”, he greeted one of the older boys that was waiting for him by the door.

‘Not turning into a Dark Lord _yet_ , Harry, _yet_.’

“Hey Harry, ready to go out with the boys tonight? We found a store that has no camaras”, said Nick as he followed after Harry into the orphanage and to his old room.

“Dunno Nick, Miss Jacobs is gonna try comfort me after this and she knows about what the boys get up to”, Harry tried to dodge going out with Nick and his boys. It had never not spelled trouble whenever they managed to drag Harry along.

‘If you get us caught by the police again-‘

“I’m not gonna get caught by the coppers”, said Harry exasperatedly, “And that was once!”

“Exactly, once”, said Nick, not missing a beat and completely used to Harry talking to Voldemort. This was one of the reasons why Harry loved being at the orphanage.

“Nobody is getting dragged to the slammer”, Nick continued, “Mickey’s got a new knife too, so if anybody’s gonna give us any trouble he’s just gonna wave it a bit around.”

‘How is that going to stop the police from taking you in?!’

“Dunno Nick, you know how Mickey gets when he gets a new shiny”, Harry said uncertainly.

“The store sells homemade crumpets.”

Harry immediately dropped his bag on his bed, “Count me in!”, he said with a wide smiles.

“Brill”, Nick grinned and was off.

‘Your inane obsession with crumpets is going to land you in jail someday’, said Voldemort, sounding rather pissed.

Harry rolled his eyes at his best friend, “Least it’ll be worth it.”

Voldemort didn’t answer him, but Harry knew in his heart that his friend was probably making a disgusted face at him.

“Oh Harry I’m so sorry!”, Miss Jacobs wailed as she stormed into his room and proceeded to try hug the life out of him, “Those awful, awful people will never know what an angel you are!”, she suddenly pushed him away, allowing him to take a gasp of precious air, “You didn’t let your sticky fingers get the better of you, did you?”, she asked harshly.

“No Miss Jacobs! I learned my lesson!”, gasped Harry before he was yanked back into her arms to be smothered.

“Oh I knew you would never, my sweet angel!”, she wailed.

‘If I had a body I’d be throwing up now’, groused Voldemort.

‘Don’t be rude’, Harry reprimanded.

Hours later, when the sun had long gone under and Miss Jacobs had gone to sleep, Harry, Nick and the boys were sneaking out of the orphanage.

Harry was perhaps the best out of all of them as he simply needed to tap into his magic and he would float out of bedroom window and land as softly as a feather would on the ground two stories down.

‘You could at least have taken all my teachings to run away. There are many of my followers that would harbour you until you are old enough to continue where I left.’

“Uh-huh”, said Harry and noiselessly flew over the orphanage fence, “This is much more fun though.”

“Shush Har”, said Sandy as she finished scaling over the fence, “Not all of us have alien blood. We need to be quiet.”

“M’not an alien”, muttered Harry, stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and pouted.

“Sure, sure”, she said, “Yer a wizard”, she made wavey fingers at him.

‘One day-‘

“Shush Vol”, Harry said, already knowing his friend’s opinion on Sandy. Not that Harry really disagreed, mind, but he still thought killing people he didn’t like was overkill.

They met up with Nick a few minutes later and walked another block to meet up with the boys. Mickey already had his knife out and was playing around with it.

‘Oh great, the moron has a new toy.’ Harry couldn’t really disagree.

They arrived at the store about an hour later, Harry tapped the doorknob once and they all piled inside.

“You’re the best Harry!”, cheered Nick as he jumped the counter and started to fiddle with the cash register.

“Yeah yeah”, Harry said absently as he only had eyes for the crumpets inside the glass counter. He tapped the glass once and it disappeared, letting Harry grab the plat full of crumpets. Harry immediately bit into one and made a face. They were dry.

‘You could easily control the world you know. No wizard in history has ever had as much power as you do, yet all you want are some fucking crumpets’, Voldemort complained loudly.

Harry dug a pinky into his ear, “Eh, it makes me happy. What’s it to you?”, he took a turn around the store as it was being ransacked by the others and grabbed a box of apple juice.

‘I’ve taught you-!’

“Yeah, yeah, all you know about magic, yadda, yadda, but its cause you wanna live vicariously through me and I thought we both agreed that ain’t healthy.”

‘I’m the person who taught what vicariously means, you don’t get to use it against me!’

Harry groaned through he mouthful of dry crumpet and made to sit outside the store on the sidewalk, “Not this again! Vol you need to get over it! You’re me best friend and as such I gotta tell you that being evil ain’t the shit my man.”

‘I’m not deigning an answer to that murder of the English grammar’, Voldemort sniffed.

“Whatever”, said Harry, his mouth still full of dry crumpet that went flying everywhere when he spoke.

‘Just drink your juice and for Merlin’s sake stop speaking with your mouth full!’

“Sure mum”, Harry smiled as he punched the straw into his apple juice box.

‘You’re insufferable.’

“Hey Harry, the cash register only had a few quid, mind doing that trick of yours for a bit? Angelo owes Jack the Hack over a hundred”, said Nick as he came out of the store, about ten quid in hand.

Giving the few quid a side-glance Harry bit his lower lip, “He better not give ‘em to Jack like that, they disappear after a few hours.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell ‘im”, said Nick as he handed the few quid over.

Harry put the quid on his lap and waved his hand over them in the motion that Voldemort had taught him and soon had a little over a hundred pounds that he gave back to Nick, “He better change them at different places.”

“Brill, thanks Harry, you’re the man”, said Nick happily and soon him and his gang were leaving the store behind. Harry only got up from the sidewalk when he had eaten all the crumpets. He went to stand at the door, blinked at the cash register and made all the money he’d made disappear about an hour ago reappear and closed back the door, making sure to lock it up before he left.

‘You’re such a bleeding heart’, groused Voldemort, sounding thoroughly disgusted.

“Yup”, grinned Harry and started to make his way back to the orphanage in his own leisurely pace.

Next day Angelo was on the newspaper, along with several other boys of Nick, since they tried to spend their magic money at the wrong place. And because Mickey whipped out his knife at the least opportune moment. Again.

“See the type of hooligans that roam the streets nowadays!”, wailed Miss Jacobs as they all ate their breakfast.

“Yeah, um, terrible”, said Nick, looking very intently at his oatmeal.

“Terrifying”, agreed Sandy, mouth full of toast and left hand under the table to hide her bruised knuckles.

‘The hooligans aren’t only on the streets’, commented Voldemort.

“Don’t be mean Vol”, murmured Harry, but only after he swallowed. He didn’t need another lecture.

A couple months later Harry was sitting in his room reading ‘Teaching Your Unruly Dog Tricks’ when he got called by Miss Jacobs to come downstairs.

“If its another couple trying to adopt me I’ll scream”, muttered Harry as he set the book down, “I’m trying to learn here and those people are the worst for Spot.”

Spot, as always when he was talked about, gave a light growl in the back of Harry’s consciousness.

‘For the love of Merlin don’t remind me’, shuddered Voldemort, who would always insist that he was paying all his previous life’s sins by living in close quarters with an Obscurus.

Spot growled a bit louder.

“All your whinen’ is making him upset – Spot, _no_ , down boy, down!”

Spot gave another low growl and settled down.

‘That everybody isn’t already dead in this orphanage is a miracle of itself.’

“What did I say about whinen’?”, groaned Harry as he reached the last of the stairs. Eyeing Miss Jacobs’ door warily Harry took a deep breathe to steady himself and knocked on the door.

“Come in!”, came Miss Jacobs’ overly cheery voice from within.

“Please don’t be another couple looking for children”, Harry whispered and opened the door.

At Miss Jacobs’ desk sat an elderly lady in a very antiquated dress, her hair done up in a tight bun. When she turned around to look at Harry her eyes widened and she gasped.

“Harry Potter?!”

‘Well, at least she doesn’t look like she’s here to adopt you’, mused Voldemort.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry stared at the white washed wall in front of him. He felt numb all over his body and was ignoring all the people rushing about the place. He was at some place called St. Mungo’s, which was the hospital for magical people that Voldemort had told him about a couple of times. Which meant the place was full of magical people.

Voldemort had been in charge of Harry’s education in all things magical since he was four years old which meant he knew his fair share about the magical world, but-. Well. Harry had never exactly been able to believe it.

In all of Harry’s years at the orphanage and the five different families he’d lived with he’d never, not even once, witnessed another magical being. Not even an inkling of one. Harry knew he was magical, of course he did, there was no other explanation as for why he could do what he did. Why Voldemort was in his head or why Spot lived inside him.

‘I still say you make a run for it’, Voldemort insisted.

Harry still had half a mind of listening to him, but after the witch lady had whisked him away from the orphanage she’d brought him to the hospital where he’d met his real parents. They’d both sobbed as they held him for the better part of an hour and told him how he’d come to get separated from them.

‘You don’t have much ground to stand on to tell me what I should do’, said Harry mentally. Harry was a bit pissed at Voldemort, but at the same time he felt like he wasn’t very surprised. Not really.

Voldemort had never made it a secret to Harry of who he was and what he used to do. When Harry had first fully understood him he’d been friends with Voldemort for years already and had lost all sense of fear he might have ever had for the man. Especially after that one time he’d jokingly said he’d tell Spot to attack Voldemort and he’d proceeded to have a mayor freak-out. Harry never understood Voldemort’s fear for Spot, who Harry saw as one of those really big breeds of dogs that simply didn’t know their strength, but were big softies on the inside. Sure he might cause destruction and have a bit of a disturbing lust for bloodshed, but so did Voldemort and Harry could never see him as any sort of harmful person.

‘Look’, Voldemort hesitated, ‘I’ve already told you several times who I am, this was never a secret. And look, your parents aren’t even dead! So there, no harm no foul.’

Harry snorted and tried to cover it up with a cough when a nurse looked at him.

‘So what do you say, lets run away quickly before we get trapped in a house of the Light and Dumbledore comes snooping in.’

‘We’re not going anywhere, they said I’ll get to meet my brother once we get home.’

Voldemort groaned and Harry could sense his displeasure.

“My sweet, sweet baby!”, Lily Potter came prancing into the room, she was holding a glass of martini in her hand just like when she’d arrived at the hospital and Harry had to wonder why nobody had tried to take it away from her.

“It’s time for you to come home with us! Come baby”, she took his hand and lead him to the entrance of the hospital where a bunch of camaras flashed and a bunch of people started shouting questions at him. James was there, smiling awkwardly at the reporters and upon seeing his wife he practically ran to her and took Harry’s other free hand.

“Let’s go”, he said happily and Harry was teleported along with them.

“Ugh, I hate teleporting”, complained Harry, very more than a little queasy after doing so for the second time that day.

‘Its called aparating you fool, I haven’t spent the last six years teaching you for you to dismiss it so easily!’

‘Aparating, whatever’, Harry mumbled unhappily at him.

“It’s called aparating”, James explained and Harry nearly died from repressing an eyeroll.

“Cool”, he said sarcastically.

“When you’re older you’ll be able to do it as well”, enthused Lily.

“Wonderful”, said Harry, hoping they could hear in his tone the sarcasm.

“It is, isn’t it?”, said James happily as he opened the front door of the house.

This time Harry really did roll his eyes.

He was led to the living room to wait while Lily went to fetch Harry’s brother. Harry couldn’t take his eyes off from all the portraits in the house and the expensive furniture.

‘It doesn’t look _too_ bad I guess’, said Voldemort as Harry inspected a flower vase with golden coated flowers drawn on it, ‘I bet that might even be real gold. When nobody’s looking you should steal it.’

“Hi”, a very soft voice said at his side, causing Harry to jump away from the sound.

In front of Harry stood a boy that looked identical to harry in every sense except for coloring. This boy had bright red hair like Lily, blue eyes and a scar that sliced through his face starting on the right side of his forehead and going down in an angle to his left cheek. He also didn’t wear any glasses like Harry.

“Um”, said Harry.

“This is James Potter II, but we call him Jimmy”, James introduced the boy, smiling widely as he held the boy’s shoulders, “Jimmy, this is your brother, Harry.”

“Hey”, said Harry and held out his hand as he smiled.

Jimmy looked firmly at his shoelaces as he slowly raised his hand and briefly shook Harry’s, “Pleasure to meet you”, he whispered so softly that Harry barely heard him.

James dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief, “Isn’t this beautiful honey? Our family is finally whole again!”

“Absolutely honey”, answered Lily as she looked at her martini and took a sip from it.

When Harry looked back to where Jimmy had stood he was surprised to see him gone, but upon some inspection of the room he saw him standing near the corner fidgeting with one of his shirt’s buttons.

‘Um’, Harry thought, unsure on what else he should think.

* * *

Harry had now been living for two weeks at the Potter residence.

So far Harry had spent his time eating as many crumpets as he wanted, watching Lily go through several glasses of martinis throughout the day and watching James trying to introduce Harry to all the wonders of the Wizarding world when he wasn’t at work.

One of the most memorable attempts done by James was when he drafted Jimmy into showing Harry how great Quidditch was in the backyard pitch. Jimmy had barely lasted a few minutes in the air before he fell off his broom. James had tried to laugh all off, but Harry had seen enough of the sport to last him a lifetime. Voldemort had always told him it was a terrible sport, but Harry had never thought it was because it literally put the lives of its participants in danger.

Lily tried to give Harry and Jimmy lessons on Potions and Charms in-between her never-ending nursing of martinis, but Jimmy spent most of the lessons looking straight at his shoe laces and Harry already knew everything she was teaching him.

The only alteration of this order was on the days where Lily dragged Jimmy to the Department of Mysteries, where they examined him weekly to try determining how he killed Voldemort and survived the killing curse.

Harry wasn’t sure how he could tell them that Voldemort had never shot the curse at Jimmy, but at Harry. Assuming the conversation would include him having to explain how Voldemort was somehow trapped in Harry’s head and that they’d been chatting since Harry was four both Harry and Voldemort had come upon the agreement that it was best Harry never mention Voldemort to his parents. Neither was Spot to be mentioned. Harry had gathered enough from Voldemort on how the Wizarding world saw Spot’s species so he wasn’t about to try his luck.

“Hey, we’re back”, greeted Lily cheerfully as she walked into the kitchen, martini in hand and interrupted Harry’s introspective moment over some crumpets.

“Hey, where’s Jimmy?”

“Oh”, Lily looked around in confusion, “I was sure he was just behind me.”

“I’m here”, said a soft voice at Harry’s side, causing him to nearly jump out of his chair.

“Hi Jimmy! You spooked me there for a second, how was the Department of Mysteries today?”

Jimmy answered by keeping his gaze straight at his shoes. His left arm twitched.

‘That boy is so far into his shell that he’s mostly shell by now.’

Harry bit his lower lip, “Hey, wanna go explore? There is whole forest in the backyard that I haven’t seen yet.”

Lily looked ecstatic, “Yes! You’re both dismissed from today’s Potions class. Go enjoy yourself!”

Wasting no time Harry grabbed his brother’s arm and dragged him to the forest where he spend most of the day talking to Jimmy and receiving very little answers.

That night at dinner James was overjoyed at hearing they went exploring, “This is wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful honey?”, he looked at Lily, who was swaying in her seat as she sipped her martini.

“Sure hun”, she slurred.

“But you know what is better than exploring the forest on foot? Exploring the forest on brooms! Exactly!”, James exclaimed happily, “You sure you don’t want your own broom yet Harry?”

“Absolutely not”, said Harry, dead serious.

James chuckled, ”You’re such a riot Harry, but don’t worry, we’ll go to Diagon Alley in a couple days and I’ll take you myself to buy your very first broom!”

“Oh goody”, Harry deadpanned.

James only smiled wider at him.

‘Why did I ever consider these people as worthy enemies?’, moaned Voldemort.

Thankfully when the day came that they had to go to Diagon Alley James was called in to his job at the Ministry of Magic for some reason or other. Harry hadn’t bothered to listen, he’d been too busy celebrating.

Lily was forced to take them instead and as she was heavily hungover she forgot to explain to Harry how the floo worked and instead Jimmy was forced to do it.

“So, um, you take the, um, powder”, Jimmy took a handful of the powder to demonstrate, “And then you, um, throw it in the, uh, fire and, er, shout the name, um, of the, um, place you’re, uh, trying, I mean, uh, not trying, oh Merlin, of the place-the place, um, you’re, uh, you’re going, um, uh, to?”

‘What?’

“I got it, don’t worry Jimmy”, Harry smiled and Jimmy instantly relaxed. Harry had been dragging Jimmy all over the place since he’d discovered that Lily didn’t have any objections to them missing all their classes with her. The result was that Jimmy had taken to following Harry around like a lost puppy and would often cling to Harry’s sleeve if they ventured to a place with people, like the nearby Muggle village.

“You, em, you go first, uh, then I’ll go”, Jimmy handed Harry the pot with the floo powder.

‘Just do as I told you to, not-not whatever the hell it is that was.’

‘Be nice’, Harry chastised, threw the powder and stepped in.

“Diagon Alley!”, he shouted and felt himself get whisked away and suddenly get spat out from another fireplace.

“Oh, Harry, is Jimmy still coming?”, asked Lily as she glanced down at Harry, careful not to upturn her glass of martini.

As if to answer her the fireplace spat out Jimmy next.

“Harry!”, Jimmy looked immensely relieved and immediately took to clinging to Harry’s sleeve.

“Excellent. Let’s go.” And off they went.

As far as they walked and in every shop they entered the crowd would all congregate around Jimmy and ask to shake his hand or ask him how he was doing. Harry also got a few people asking how he was doing now that he reunited with his family and how it felt to have The-Boy-Who-Lived as his twin brother.

They’d gotten most of what they needed by the time they entered the pet store, only their books and wands were left over.

“I don’t think you both need an owl. One is more than enough”, mused Lily.

Harry looked around and spotted a tiny ginger kitten sleeping alone in a cage, “Ooh, can I have him? Then Jimmy can get an owl, what do you say Jimmy?”

Jimmy’s shoulder gave a slight twitch that might be interpreted as a shrug.

“Oh! I know just the one!”, said the shop owner and soon was showing Jimmy a snowy white owl.

“He’s gorgeous!”, exclaimed Harry.

“It’s a she, but that’s indeed the truth!”, enthused the shop owner.

Jimmy hesitantly reached out to the cage and with one finger stroked her feathers.

“Soft”, he murmured.

“That’s a yes then”, said Lily and proceeded to buy the owl and kitten and all the related accessories they would need.

“Now, Mommy needs more olives, here’s some Galleons, go buy whatever you still need and come meet me at the Cauldron later”, said Lily and was gone before Harry could even get in another word.

Harry sighed, “Let’s go get the books next. At least she took the stuff we’ve bought so far.”

Jimmy didn’t comment.

After thoroughly enjoying the bookstore and buying as many extra books as their budget allowed Harry dragged Jimmy to the wand shop.

A little more than half an hour later when they exited the shop Harry had to drag his twin into a tiny alcove.

“Look Jimmy, nobody can know about this”, Harry pleaded. Jimmy kept looking at Harry with the same wide eyes he’d had since the moment Harry got his want and Ollivander had told him what made it special.

“But Harry, this could mean-“

“Please Jimmy”, Harry pleaded again, “If they find out about this they’ll do who knows what to me at the Department of Mysteries.”

Jimmy flinched when Harry mentioned that place, confirming some of Harry’s theories of what it was like for Jimmy to go there every week. It also made him feel all the worse for using it to get Jimmy to keep his silence.

“Okay”, Jimmy said softly, looking at his shoes now.

“Thank you Jimmy”, Harry breathed in relief and took a look at how much money they had left, “Hey, wanna go eat some ice cream?”

Jimmy perked up a little at that and Harry swore he was going to do whatever it took him to make Jimmy comfortable around him again.

Fortunately, this turned out to be easy since Jimmy already idolized Harry and still followed him around like a puppy on their little excursions. Voldemort hated these excursions with a passion since he found them boring, but Jimmy adored them, so Harry made sure to take a little walk outside at least twice a week.

On the day before they were supposed to be off to Hogwarts a guy called Remus Lupin came to visit. He tried to make some conversation with Harry before he awkwardly gave up and went to talk with James. Maybe it wasn’t his fault entirely that he couldn’t connect with Harry. Ever since he’d been abandoned at that church Harry’d developed a deep mistrust for all adults in his life. The fact that he’d gone through five adoptive families in six years didn’t help either.

Also, there was the fact that he had Voldemort’s constant commentary to listen to about the rest of the world and Voldemort was one paranoid motherfucker who distrusted everybody.

‘Don’t trust him’, Voldemort had hissed as soon as Remus had stepped into the house. He more or less looked like a hobo so Harry decided that he’d trust his friend’s judgement of character.

That night Remus stayed over and the next morning accompanied them all to the train station.

“For security’s sake”, James had explained and at first Harry had thought he was exaggerating, but then they arrived at Platform 9 ¾ and chaos erupted.

“IT’S THE BOY-WHO-LIVED!”, somebody shouted and in less than a minute they had dozens of people trying to greet Jimmy, who clung to Harry like a lifeline while James and Remus blocked off the majority of the people as they made their way to the train. Lily followed behind, sipping her martini.

Harry – and by extend, Jimmy – jumped quickly on board the train and went on search of an empty compartment.

“Here, let’s put away our luggage”, Harry helped Jimmy heave his trunk into the luggage tray, discreetly using some of his powers to help along.

Jimmy collapsed on the seats and curled up in one of the corners near the window. Harry sighed and put Milly’s wicker basket on the seat besides Jimmy along with Hedwig’s cage. Milly gave a soft meow, probably still traumatized after their ambush from the mob at the platform.

Harry had just sat down when a ginger boy opened the compartment door.

“Um, can I sit here? Its all full”, he said.

“Sure”, Harry smiled.

The boy sighed in relief and plopped down on the seat opposite to Harry and Jimmy, “Its like a madhouse out there, someone saw Jimmy Potter and completely lost it.”

“Tell me about it”, snorted Harry, “It was awful wasn’t it Jimmy?”

Jimmy’s shoulder gave a weak twitch as he kept his gaze firm on the window.

The boy gaped, “You’re Jimmy Potter!”, he pointed at Jimmy and then looked at Harry, “So you gotta be Harry Potter!”

“Yup”, said Harry, popping the p.

‘I don’t like him. Kick him out.’

The boy was still gaping.

“You gonna catch flies”, said Harry with a raised eyebrow.

The boy quickly closed his mouth, blushing furiously to the tip of his ears, “Sorry”, he mumbled.

“S’ okay”, said Harry with a shrug, “What’s your name?”

“Ron Weasley”, the boy introduced himself and got something out of his pocket, “And this is my pet Scabbers. He used to be my brother Percy’s, but he got an owl this summer, so now he’s mine.”

“Cool”, said Harry as he gazed at the snoozing rat, “This is Milly”, he presented the equally snoozing kitten, “And that’s Hedwig, she’s Jimmy’s”, Hedwig hooted when she heard her name.

“Cool”, echoed Ron as he extended his arm and gently stroke Hedwig’s feathers.

“You said you have a brother? He already gone to Hogwarts?”

“Yeah, I got several of ‘em. Percy’s a prefect this year. Wouldn’t shut up about it the whole summer-“

Ron continued to rant about his considerable amount of siblings while Harry listened and sometimes offered his input on some topics.

A lady with a trolley full of snacks came by after a few hours and Harry decided to splurge and bought as many of them as he could. Ron was invited to eat along and Harry was able to coax Jimmy into eating a chocolate frog so he called his decision a win.

The ride was almost over when a pale boy with pale hair and pale eyes opened the compartment door without so much as knocking.

‘Holy Merlin’s pants, Lucius cloned himself!’, exclaimed Voldemort.

“Its rude not to knock”, said Harry.

The pale boy ignored him and said, “I heard James Potter the second is on the Express, I’ve searched for him everywhere.”

“Well, there he is”, pointed Harry.

The boy blinked, looked over to where Harry was pointed and only then saw Jimmy, still seated in the corner and doing an excellent impression of being part of the furniture.

“You sure that’s him?”, asked the pale boy.

“Considering he’s my twin brother, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

The pale boy’s shoulders sagged in obvious disappointment before he squared them again. He cleared his throat and extended his hand towards Jimmy, “My name is Draco Malfoy.”

Jimmy didn’t even twitch, instead looking like he was melting even further into his corner.

‘That is so pathetic.’

“He’s shy”, explained Harry as he mentally swatted at Voldemort for being rude.

The pale boy, Draco, took back his hand and just kept staring at Jimmy, “You sure he’s still alive?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. I saw his foot twitch about two hours ago.”

Draco was now staring at Harry.

Harry extended his hand to Draco, “Hi, I’m Harry, pleasure to meet you.”

“Um”, Draco blinked in confusion and shook Harry’s hand, “Sure. Look, I’m-I’m going back to my compartment.”

“What a git”, said Ron, crouching up his face once the compartment door closed again.

“Yeah, one should always knock”, Harry agreed.

“That’s not-never mind.”

The Express halted about an hour later and all the first years were herded by a giant man to follow him upon exiting the train. He led them to a giant lake and ordered them to all board little boats that would take them to the truly splendorous castle sitting on a hill at the other side of the lake.

Harry, Jimmy, Ron and a boy called Dean all shared a little boat on their trek across the lake.

To ease his travel companions Harry told them, “Chin up boys, if something happens I’ll have you know that I’m an excellent swimmer.”

“Dude”, started Dean, as Harry’s two other companions simply stared at Harry, “That does not help, at all.”

‘How rude. Kick him off the boat. We’ll say the Giant Squid took him.’

“Don’t worry Dean, even if you’re being rude I’d still save you.”

Dean scooted a bit away from Harry.

Upon arriving at Hogwarts Harry was even more in awe at its brilliance. The witch lady that had whisked Harry away from the orphanage greeted the first years and took them off from the giant man. They were told to wait in a hallway where ghosts scared the rest of the children shitless, but all Harry could think about was how much he could learn from them.

‘Ghost teachers are actually exceptionally bad at their job.’

‘They are? That’s a shame’, thought Harry morosely.

And then they were allowed inside the Great Hall where they stood and waited while the lady witch called their names after a hat sang for them.

“It’s a hat? Fred and George told me I had a wrestle a Troll!”, whispered Ron.

“That would have been fun to watch”, mused Harry.

“That would have been extremely dangerous”, said a girl with bushy brown hair, looking at him with disapproval.

“But still fun”, Harry insisted with a grin.

‘We can’t have the future of the Wizarding World dying off at eleven Harry’, Voldemort sounded tired for some reason.

‘Somebody could step in before they got mauled.’

The girl huffed at Harry and pointedly looked away from him, her arms crossed.

A few minutes later the girl was identified as Hermione Granger when the lady witch called for her. The hat took its time with her, but finally sorted her into Gryffindor.

Ron groaned at this. Harry remembered his long rant about how he was surely getting sorted into Gryffindor like his whole family had been.

“You could always go to some other house”, offered Harry.

“Don’t think its up to me”, grumbled Ron.

“Potter, Harry!”

Harry took a second to realize she was calling for him, still used to actually being Harry Green, but realized just on time before she had to call for him a second time, or worse, assume he wasn’t there.

Harry sat on the stool and as soon as the Hat was placed on Harry’s head it said, “Oh no”, followed by a shouted, “SLYTHERIN!”, before Harry could even ask what it meant by that.

“Okay then, I guess”, said Harry, gave the Hat back to the witch lady and walked to the house table decorated in green and silver where half of the table was gaping at him and the other half was giving a few claps while they also gaped.

“Potter, James!”, called the lady as soon as Harry had taken a seat at the side of a pudgy girl, who was still gaping at him.

James sat under the Hat for almost as long as the Hermione girl, but eventually the Hat shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

The table in gold and red applauded madly as Jimmy slowly walked to them.

“What just happened?”, asked one of the older students at the Slytherin table.

“Dude, did we just get the evil twin?”, asked another and this seemed to spark immediate debate and soon all four house tables were gossiping about the evil Potter twin and the good Potter twin.

‘Welp, guess I’m already typecast’, mused Harry to his friend.

‘This is going to complicate things, mark my words’, grumbled Voldemort.

‘Maybe’, Harry thought as he idly munched on a crumpet. Normally he would have stolen a few for later, but lately he’d had so many crumpets that he was no longer seeing the appeal. Hopefully he could find a new fulfilling challenge at Hogwarts.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank the kind people that have been leaving comments so far. Y'all rock.

Severus Snape usually considered himself a patient man. He had to, in order to suffer through the never-ending stream of dunderheads that passed through his class each year and to be the Head of the most hated House in Hogwarts history. But Harry Potter drove him up the walls on a daily basis and the school year had only started two weeks ago.

Harry, unlike his twin, took far more after their father for Severus’ comfort. It was obvious the boy was under the terrible influence of his father and Severus was only waiting to hear the first reports of bullying to give him detention for the rest of his years at Hogwarts.

How nobody could see through the boy’s obvious cheating Severus could still not figure out. It was very simple, no child could ever be that smart and magically adept at that age, no matter who their twin brother was or who people thought they might become in the future.

Perfect marks in all his classes? Perfecting each spell on the first try? Answering every question perfectly? For Merlin’s sake, the boy was obviously cheating and badly to top it off.

If only Dumbledore could start seeing that and stop sweating bullets literally every time Harry’s perfect record got mentioned.

To correct all these misunderstandings Severus had called the younger Potter twin into his office and was planning to grill him until he cracked under the pressure and admitted to all his cheating.

There came the knocking sound at his door and Severus took one last opportunity to survey the essay he was grading before setting it aside. This task would need his full attention.

“Enter.”

Potter opened the door and grinned at him, insufferably happy like always, “Good afternoon Professor Snape!”

“Sit”, Severus commanded as he pointed at the seat in front of him.

“Sure”, chirped Potter happily and sat down, “What can I help you with, Sir?”

How insufferably helpful.

“You are going to explain to me how you’ve been cheating in all your classes”, Severus sneered. If there was one thing that bothered him most about this whole ordeal it was that no matter how hard he’d tried and how many impossible questions he’d asked Potter, he’d always answered them correctly.

Potter’s left eye twitched.

“I’m not cheating sir”, he said, insufferably calm.

“Don’t lie to me Mr. Potter!”, seethed Severus.

“I’m not-“

“I’ve been following your progress in all your classes, you’ve done perfectly in every single one of them. Too perfectly.”

“It’s not my fault if everything’s so easy”, Potter was finally looking a bit upset by this conversation.

“At yesterday’s class I slipped you a list of questions I normally ask the students in preparation for their NEWTs and you answered them all perfectly”, Severus said in a more calm tone, knowing there was no denying this.

Potter blinked at him a few times. His left eye twitched again.

“Oh. That’s, um, uh”, Potter swallowed, his left eye twitched again, ”Something.”

“Something”, echoed Severus in a deadpan, “Is that what they call cheating nowadays?”

Potter was now staring at Severus in such a way that made him almost feel like he wasn’t looking at him at all. No matter, Severus could outwait any cheating student, no matter how long it would take.

It almost took ten full minutes of Potter simply staring at him, but eventually he sighed and looked down at his lap.

Ah, here it comes. The confession. Severus barely stopped himself from smiling in victory.

“Sir, I’m not a cheater-“, Potter started and Severus could feel his nostrils flaring and was ready to ream Potter a new one when he continued hastily, “-but I can explain what has been happening! Just, please listen to my full story before you decide what to do.”

Severus narrowed his eyes at Potter, pursed his lips and nodded stiffly, “This better be worth it Potter, or you’ll be in a world of trouble, more so than you already are.”

Potter winced slightly, “Okay”, he took a deep breath, “So I don’t know how much of my story you’ve heard? About how I got separated from my parents?”

The sympathy angle? How unoriginal.

“Yes, the Dark Lord attacked your home, you and your brother were separated while your parents were comatose. You went missing a few years later because the Ministry stopped keeping track of you”, said Severus, barely containing his eye roll.

Potter nodded, “Almost, but not quite”, Potter took another deep breath, “I was sent to my mother’s sister when I was a baby-“

TO PETUNIA?! Severus suddenly sat up straighter in his seat. Who in their right mind would do that?

“-and she and her husband _really_ didn’t like anything weird happening in their house. Thing is, they got angry over anything and everything, so I was scared most of the time, which meant that a lot of the time weird stuff happened.”

Merlin, was he saying what Severus thought he was saying? But what did this have to do-?

“And with time it only got worse, you know? I’d completely lose control and then one day I accidentally trashed my cu-um, my bedroom, uh, very badly. My Uncle was so angry he started to scream he never wanted to see me again and get rid of me so my Aunt suggested he take me to some small church in London. So he, uh, did that”, Potter looked at his lap again and fidgeted with his fingers.

Merlin, was all Severus could think at that moment as he looked at the boy with wide eyes.

“B-but that’s not where things ended see, I got taken in by an orphanage where they gave me a new last name cause I didn’t know my real one, so I got registered as Harold Green and that’s how I got lost from the Ministry. Anyways, that’s not my point here, my point is when I was at the orphanage I got to calm down a lot, but I now knew I wasn’t normal see, so I tried to do stuff I knew I was capable of and-“

“So you’re telling me you’ve been doing magic since you were, what? Six? And without a wand? Don’t take me for an idiot Potter”, Severus sneered. He was already evaluating how much of Potter’s story was true and how much the boy had made up when Potter pointed his finger at the stack of essays on Severus’ desk and they suddenly started to float.

“I can do much more than that”, said Potter after Severus had been staring at the floating parchment rolls for more than a minute.

“How are you doing this?”, asked Severus, not taking his eyes of the essays and refusing to admit the implications of what he was seeing.

“Magic Professor”, said Potter as he lowered the stack of essays to be exactly like they were before. And then he turned the essay on the top of the stack into a chinchilla.

“Merlin!”, Severus shouted and stood up so fast from his chair that it fell backwards.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”, Potter quickly reversed the effects and in some distant part of Severus’ brain that wasn’t screaming he had to admit that it was an excellent transfiguration. Many adult wizards would even struggle to keep any fur off the essay upon turning it back.

Severus covered his face in his hands and deep a couple of deep breathes, “Who else knows about this?”, he asked through his fingers.

“Uh, a couple of the kids at the orphanage knew what I can do, but they’d never tell anybody.”

Severus tried not to think about what the Ministry would do with that type of information.

“Please don’t expel me”, said Potter in a soft voice, “This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. I love learning about magic and everything just comes to me so _easy_ that all I have to do sometimes is looks at something and I’ll understand it.”

Taking another deep breath Severus finally lowered his hands. This was worse than what Dumbledore feared. So much worse. Except, well, Potter wasn’t evil. One look at Potter’s bright green eyes was enough to tell Severus that Potter wasn’t about to start the next Wizarding war.

“I’m not going to expel you, foolish child”, muttered Severus as he took out his wand and levitated his chair back into place. Severus sat down heavily on his chair once it was upright again and proceeded to stare at Potter for several long minutes, till the boy started to fidget and look quite nervous.

“Do you have any idea what the Wizarding World would say if they knew what you are capable of?”, he asked finally after collecting his thoughts.

“Um. That its, um, really weird?”

Severus couldn’t stop himself from snorting, “’Weird’ is putting it mildly Mr. Potter, they’d brand you the next Dark Lord. Some have already done so like I imagine you’ve noticed.”

“Yeah”, said Potter, not looking too happy about it, “People are really stupid sometimes.”

Severus hummed, “So I take it you understand that the current state of affairs can’t keep going the way it has up till now.”

Potter sighed, “Is it really necessary? I’m not even doing things wandlessly, I’m doing everything the way the teachers are showing the rest of the students.”

“Yet here we are. How long do you think it would take for the rest of your teachers to become concerned about you? To compare you to the Dark Lord?”, Severus didn’t mention that Dumbledore was already doing so and it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the teachers started to listen to him.

Potter pouted. Here Severus was worrying for his safety and Potter was pouting.

“You will cease this immediately, I am trying to look out for your future. You can show your true talents to close friends and allies and when I mean true talents I am exclusively referring to your talents _with_ a wand. I don’t believe it wise to show any other person your wandless abilities. In fact, this knowledge should stay inside the walls of this office and go no further, not until you are ready to for it”, Severus laid out, if Potter was to ever have even a semblance of a normal life in was imperative this was kept a secret.

Potter blew out a heavy breath, “Fine. I suppose you are right”, the insufferable brat allowed, “Its just going to be really boring in class now.”

“I suggest you get used to it”, said Severus and stood up.

“I-“, he paused for a second, and then decided to plough on, “I thank you for confiding this in me”, he felt it was necessary to say, especially since if he had understood right Potter hadn’t even told his own parents about this.

Potter smiled at him as he got up from his own chair, “I knew I could trust you Sir!”

Severus nodded, not sure how he felt about that, “You are dismissed.”

“Have a nice evening Sir”, Potter chirped and left.

Left wondering why Potter would trust him over his own parents Severus despaired for about an hour where he allowed himself to indulge in his favourite Firewhiskey brand before he went back to grading.

* * *

Not even a full week later and Severus was once again despairing about Potter and was forced to call him back into his office.

“I won’t ask if you are an idiot since you’ve shown clear evidence of the contrary, but I still have to ask what in Merlin’s name possessed you to do this?!”, Severus raged.

Potter cocked his head to the side, his left eye twitched, “Do what Sir?”

Done with beating around the bush Severus shouted, “Failing all your classes!”, he pointed an accusatory finger at Potter, “You’ve been failing so spectacularly in all of your classes this week that I’ve had basically all your teachers talk to me about it!”

Filius especially was distraught over what had happened with his best student ever.

“But you said I should keep it a secret!”, Potter had the gall to argue with him and look upset.

“Not like this you imbecile!”, he shouted and saw Potter’s left eye twitch.

“Then how?!”, Potter shouted, but then immediately reigned in his emotions, it almost gave Severus whiplash.

“I’m sorry Sir, but how did you mean then?”

Severus had to blink at the abrupt mood swing, but quickly focused back on the problem at hand.

“Obviously by acting like your fellow peers to stop standing out among them, not stand out even more than before!”, spat Severus.

Potter’s eyebrows were all drawn up in confusion, “But-I”, he bit his lower lip, “I don’t really get it. I’m sorry.”

Feeling a headache coming on Severus took a deep breath and settled back into his seat, “What do you mean you ‘don’t get it’?”

“The other children. They’re all so-”, Potter winced, “I’m sorry, but they’re so _stupid_.”

“They’re children”, said Severus, expecting his words to be self-explanatory.

Potter sighed, “I know, I know! But back at the orphanage I always got along with the older kids and I got bumped up two grades at the school and two of the families that adopted me gave me back because they said there was no way I was a real child.”

What.

“What?”, Severus couldn’t help but blurt, “You were adopted? _Twice_?”, and got returned on both occasions? Severus didn’t even want to think what kind of damage that would do-

“Five times actually. It never stuck. Personally I always preferred the orphanage. Miss Jacobs – our caretaker – was way more understanding of me than any of them ever were.”

Sweet Merlin.

“To be honest, I tried to copy Granger, but even she fails sometimes when casting a spell and I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never failed any spell I’ve tried to do. Ever. It boggles my mind that you even _can_ fail.”

If Severus was to be honest he was still stuck on the fact that Potter was a child with some serious underlying social relations issues.

He settled on, “I – see”, after several minutes of trying to process and failing how he was supposed to help this child to learn relate socially to his peer group.

Potter grinned at him, “I knew you’d get it Sir!”, he chirped.

Merlin help him.

“I’ll think on how to help you”, said Severus, massaging his temples, “Come back tomorrow this hour, in the meantime continue as you are doing. Dismissed.”

“See you tomorrow Professor!”, Potter said way too cheerfully as he exited the office.

Once he was sure he was alone Severus allowed his head to thunk against his desk.

* * *

One full bottle of Firewhiskey and a sleepless night later Severus could finally say he had a semblance of a plan.

“Potter”, he greeted when he opened the door for the boy, allowing him to skip into his office.

“Good afternoon Professor!”, Potter chirped, cheerful as ever.

“Hm”, Severus grunted absentmindedly and took his usual seat, “I’ve thought long and hard about this Potter and I’ve come up with a plan which might help. Mind, it’ll take an almost daily effort from both our parts.”

“Oh?”, Potter cocked his head in curiosity, his left eye twitched.

“I’m going to teach you how to fake being a normal student”, said Severus, crossing his fingers and putting them on the desk in front of him.

Potter pulled a face.

“This is not only essential for your years at Hogwarts, but will teach you valuable lessons that will serve you for the rest of your life”, Severus explained, “I’ll be teaching you for at least three days each week how to do this. Our cover story will be that I’ve placed you under detention for having caught you cheating. If anybody asked why you were such a prodigy on your first weeks at Hogwarts you will say you were cheating.”

Potter’s left eye twitched, “I-“, he paused and looked away, made a face and then looked back at Severus after a while, “I think its for the best.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. That was not the answer he was expecting, nevertheless, “Good. I’m glad that we can agree on this.”

Potter’s left eye twitched again, yet Severus could hear the sincerity in his next words, “Absolutely Sir.”

For a moment Severus was tempted to try unravel this mystery, but reminded himself that he had bigger fish to fry, “Excellent, we’ll start immediately. Take out your homework and I’ll help you.”

Potter looked confused, “But-“

“Help you make it look normal, Potter.”

“Oh!”, Potter exclaimed, understanding blossoming on his face as he upturned his bag on Severus’ desk without any regard for the contents.

Severus sighed. He had a feeling he’d be doing a lot of that for the foreseeable future, “Let’s start with how to take care properly of one’s school materials.”

“But I’ve been doing this since forever!”

“Don’t your things break?”

“Well, yeah, but I just fix them when nobody’s watching”, Potter shrugged.

He really had his work cut out for him, didn’t he?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco meets Harry. Draco isn't sure what to think about all this crazy shit.

Draco Malfoy had left his family manor the 1st of September having certain expectations of what his first year at Hogwarts would look like.

He’d start off by attempting to befriend James Potter II. Being the friend of The-Boy-Who-Lived could only beneficial in the long run for Draco. Then he’d get sorted into Slytherin where he would befriend all his peers and make connections. When at class he’d excel and be the best, surpassing all the other students not only from his own House, but from the other Houses as well. Come Quidditch season he’d cheer faithfully for the Slytherin team and hopefully make connections with some of the players to ensure a spot on the team by the next year. And then, finally, at the end of year Slytherin would win the House Cup for the 7th time in a row and Draco would go back to his family feeling proud.

His plans had started to derail as soon as he met James Potter II on the Hogwarts Express. First off it took Harry Potter to point out that he was even there for Draco to notice him. Then he refused to meet Draco’s eyes or hand, apparently preferring to simply blend in with the furniture.

The younger Potter twin seemed to find this normal and not highly alarming like Draco did, which just served to further bewilder Draco and make him question what was happening at the Potter house. Draco excused himself from the weird situation as quickly as he could and decided that maybe defeating the Dark Lord had done The-Boy-Who-Lived some brain damage and it was better to not associate himself with the celebrity. No wonder really that Draco had been unable to find any interview of the boy in any of the magical newspapers that his father usually bought.

Next Harry Potter was sorted into Slytherin in the Sorting Ceremony, his sorting happening almost as swiftly as Draco’s, which was completely unfair. All of Draco’s family had been in Slytherin and here this boy was, with a Mudblood for a mother and a blood-traitor for a father practically flying to Slytherin.

The fact that his twin, the legendary Boy-Who-Lived was sorted into Gryffindor caused mayor rumours to be spread around, taking away even further from the attention that Draco was supposed to be receiving. It left him heavily disgruntled upon arriving that night at his new dorm room. To remedy this Draco proceeded to write to his father, telling him everything that had happened that day.

The next morning Potter was humming cheerfully to himself as he ate his breakfast, making everybody that bought into the evil-twin/good-twin story extremely nervous. Draco ignored him in favour of reading the letter his father had sent him.

Like Draco suspected he would, Lucius Malfoy encouraged him to befriend Harry Potter and keep a close ear to the rumour mill. This didn’t exactly comfort Draco, who for some reason, just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something weird going on with the younger Potter twin. Maybe it was the glasses? After all, how many wizards wore glasses nowadays, what with all the potions invented specifically to remedy this?

Then their first class took place, which they happened to share with Gryffindor and Draco discovered he had two mayor contenders to his rightful place as the best of his year. First was the Mudblood, Granger, which was right down a disgrace and second-

Well. Draco found it difficult to explain.

Harry Potter simply waltzed through the class exercises like he was born doing them. The teachers adored him instantly and each time Potter smiled at any of them they’d all just fall further in love with him. Draco felt like accusing him of cheating, but since he still had plans to befriend him he instead approached him after classes and asked if they could do their homework together with the hopes of cracking Potter’s secret.

“Oh! But I’ve already done all my homework”, Potter had said with his insufferable smile locked in place.

“How? We had a several inch long essay for Charms!”

Potter simply shrugged, “I thought about it during lunch and quickly penned it down. It’s very easy really.”

Draco turned around and stomped away, pointedly not mentioning that he’d barely been able to follow along with the theoretical concept of the class and that he knew for a fact that several students were going to ask the teacher to go over the subject once again later on.

Potter was doing so well that soon half the school was talking about it, comparing him nonstop with his poor twin brother, who barely said a word to anybody and would often seek his younger twin’s company when they had free hours. The whole school seemed to share Draco’s acute disappointment over The-Boy-Who-Lived, who was so shy to the point of it being painful to witness.

Then came the mayor scandal. The gossipers of Hogwarts were kept busy overtime with what happened next. Harry Potter was suddenly the worst student in all of his classes. Where before it had all been ‘yes Professor, no problem Professor, here is my perfect replication of the spell on my very first try Professor’, now it was all ‘I don’t know Professor, I don’t understand Professor, I can’t do the spell at all Professor’. It made everybody confused. It made _Draco_ confused, which was unacceptable.

Draco wrote his father.

His father advised that he kept a close eye on the situation. Also, he should raise his performance above that Mudblood girl already.

Draco gritted his teeth and studied extra hard that weekend.

This continued for another week and then suddenly Potter was doing better again. But only better, not the same as before. He now also struggled to perform the spells like the rest of the class and could actually be seen doing his homework at the common room.

“What happened Potter, you used to be the best”, asked Blaise Zabini one day, after he lost a bet and was forced to go ask Potter or risk paying Draco twenty chocolate frogs.

“I was cheating”, said Potter in a blank voice, not noticing the entire common room angling closer to listen in and then look at him in bewilderment.

“Uh, no you weren’t, nobody can fake being that perfect”, said Blaise looking as confused as Draco felt.

“I was cheating”, repeated Potter, “I’m serving detention with Professor Snape for the rest of the foreseeable future because of it.”

Blaise blinked a couple times and turned to look at Draco and the group of other Slytherin first year boys and shrugged as if to say ‘what now?’

Draco shrugged back and decided to ask Severus next time he saw him.

“Is it true that Potter was cheating?”, asked Draco as he panted, roughly five minutes after the exchange in the common room.

“Draco at least knock on the door before you barge into my office”, chastised Severus from where he sat grading homework at his desk.

“Sorry, sorry”, Draco quickly apologized as he closed the door behind him, “But is it true? He’s got to be lying. Nobody can fake being that good at something.”

“Mr. Potter was indeed cheating. I’ve talked to him extensively about this and he will cease it immediately.”

It was only Draco’s entire life’s teachings in etiquette that stopped him from crying bullshit.

“But you can’t fake that!”, Draco said instead.

“I can assure you that Mr. Potter was faking it”, said Severus, not even once looking up from his grading, “Now, if you don’t have anything else to do besides gossiping, I suggest you go back to you peers and proceed gossiping further with them.”

Draco huffed, recognizing a dismissal when he heard one, “Fine, but nobody is going to buy it.”

Except that the vast majority of Hogwarts’ population totally did. The teachers changed the way they were treating Potter immediately, keeping more of a close eye to him and only very reluctantly giving him House Points. Also, Granger very angrily berated him in one of their joint classes for being a cheat.

This didn’t faze Potter much. In fact, nothing about the whole scandal seemed to really bother him at all. Nothing ever seemed to bother him.

“He’s such a weirdo”, commented Pansy one day. Draco couldn’t disagree and mostly moped at the fact that he probably would never find a way to make any sort of connection with either of the Potter twins.

“Can I do my homework with you?”

Draco snapped his head up so fast that it was a wonder he didn’t hurt himself, but he didn’t even mind. There, right in front of him was the boy that troubling him since the beginning of the school year – _and he was asking to do his homework with Draco_!

“Sure!”, he quickly said and watched Potter unpack his things carefully from his bag, looking like some neurotic with the way he set his ink bottle down with both hands and adjusted it till he was satisfied with the way it was situated.

It was the very first time Draco had ever seen him do this and he was sure he would have remembered seeing him do this before. It was too weird.

“Oookaaayyy”, said Pansy as she eyed Potter warily while he straightened out his parchment.

Draco couldn’t have said it better himself.

* * *

“We need to stop his new habit”, said Pansy as she eyed Potter conversing with the Granger Mudblood in the middle of the hallway, as if they were friends or something. As if she had gone through all the same trouble Draco had to befriend Harry.

In the last month Draco had learned a lot about Harry Potter. The first thing he learned was that Harry was extremely disconnected to what was happening around him and the few times he noticed something he didn’t seem to care much for it. He’d barely even blink if somebody told him he was going to be the next Dark Lord, yet Draco suspected that there was something to it since it always made his left eye twitch without fail.

Second was that Potter loved his twin, no matter how pathetic this twin seemed to be. And James Potter II had officially reached a whole new level of pathetic on their very first flying lesson. Harry had gotten his broom to listen him on his third try, but Draco had seen his distant gaze why he was supposedly ‘trying’ and was about to ask him if he was actually trying – Draco had figured this part out rather quickly, Harry spent ages simply pretending to not understanding things and did a bad job of hiding it – when the elder Potter twin lost all control over his broom and got swept into the air. Then he lost his grip on the broom, fell several meters and crashed hard enough to break his arm. Harry had instantly raced to his twin’s side and went with Madame Hooch to take him to the infirmary, where they both stayed for the better part of the day, Harry not leaving his twin even once.

Some sort of breach in the twins’ relationship seemed to get fixed that day and Draco observed the elder Potter twin walk around looking a little less hunched in when he was with the few housemates that dared to associate themselves with such a failure of a Wizard. Maybe his defeat of the Dark Lord burned out his magical core?

Third and perhaps most importantly Draco had learned that Harry was faking his class performance. He had also never cheated. Draco could tell this and so could all their fellow housemates. Hell, even Crabbe and Goyle were a bit suspicious about it and that was saying a lot about how terrible a liar Harry was sometimes. Draco had sat for hours during their homework sessions, watching Harry write down his essays at snail pace, sometimes slowing himself down further by erasing and redoing parts all while looking bored out of his mind.

Draco was very confused about this, but had soon deduced that he wasn’t going to get a straight answer from Harry anytime soon, so he mainly concentrated on befriending him. Which wasn’t easy either. Harry had seemed to be extremely bored by whatever Draco had to say most of the time and only seldomly would he join in on the conversation out of his own free will.

But Draco was nothing if not stubborn and after a whole month of hard work of constantly including Harry in the conversation, inviting him to play games with the group and pestering him relentlessly at any and all times when he thought he could get away with it Harry was finally communicating with him out of his own free will. He’d even deliver commentary on Draco writing to his father almost daily – he was laughing at Draco, which was highly insulting, but Draco still counted it as a win.

And now he was chatting with a filthy Mudblood, who hadn’t even put in a fraction of the effort Draco had. Maybe he should send her a letter laced with Bubotuber Pus.

“They’re coming over”, hissed Pansy, her eyes narrowed into slits as she eyed the Mudblood.

“Hey, this is Hermione”, Harry introduced her and she had the gal to wave at them in greeting, “She says she knows the answer of question number four.”

“We have a book for this”, said Theo, also eying the Mudblood with disdain.

Harry made a confused face, “But isn’t it customary to ask other students help when stuck on a question?”

Merlin, it was one of his stupid effort to ‘fit in’ again.

“We asked you”, said Draco, his tone dry as the desert.

“Yeah, but I don’t know the answer.”

“I saw you write it down and then hastily erase it when Theo asked you!”, said Pansy, perhaps a little louder than was called for in the library, but Draco had to agree with her, even if he knew this line of conversation was going to go nowhere fast.

“Uh, it was the wrong answer. I don’t know the answer. I’m terrible at Transfiguration”, Harry lied, not very convincingly, might Draco add.

Even the Mudblood was giving Harry a sidelong look now.

Harry gave an obviously fake cough, “Okay, Hermione can sit here and she’ll help us. She’s very nice”, he added, looking unsure of what was appropriate to say.

The Mudblood gave Harry a weak smile and sat down at his side, which had previously been occupied by Draco.

That bitch.

“Let me see your book”, she said and Pansy passed her the book before Draco could hit her with it.

At the end she actually helped them a lot. And she seemed to get Harry talking often and let Draco and the others participate in the conversation often.

Maybe Draco would call off the Bubotuber Pus laced letter. For now.

* * *

The Halloween festivities were just as grandious as Draco’s father had told him they would be. Draco had spent the entire day talking about the balls his father would usually throw at the Manor for the date and how Hogwarts almost measured up to it.

Granger and Harry told him about their habits in the Muggle world of going trick or treating. Why Harry would know anything from the Muggle world confused Draco a little, but he supposed it was probably because of his mother.

He was also subjected to hours upon hours of complaints directed to Weasley, who had apparently insulted Granger gravelly. Harry just nodded along with whatever Granger had to say so Draco followed his example and by the end of their afternoon study session they all left for their respective House tables and enjoyed the feast without any mayor hiccups, that is until-

“TROLL! TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!”

“Ooh, is this something that happens every year?”, asked Harry as they were all ushered out of the Great Hall.

“No, Potter, it is not”, said their exhausted prefect, Gemma Farley. Draco knew how she felt. Harry would sometimes ask the weirdest questions about the weirdest things.

“So it’s a special for this year only?”

“No Potter, this is very real.”

Harry blinked at her, his left eye twitched, he turned to Draco, “Is that sarcasm?”

“Merlin”, he heard Farley whisper in exasperation.

“Nope”, answered Draco.

Harry looked even more confused now, “So if this is real, where’s the police? The Magical-the Aurors, yes, where are those?”

“That’s actually a good question”, mused Farley.

Harry was silent for a while as they marched down to their House, “Is the Troll going to kill all the teachers?”

“Merlin”, Farley didn’t even bother to whisper this time.

“No Potter, it’ll take something stronger than a Troll to kill Snape”, answered Adrian Pucey.

“Oh that’s great”, Harry smiled, “I’ll send him a get well card to the infirmary later.”

“Potter, _nobody is going to get hurt_!”, hissed Farley.

“Then why are they evacuating us at all?!”, exclaimed Harry.

“Merlin give me strength”, said Farley, her hands covering her face.

“Because Dumbledore said so”, explained Pucey, looking like he regretted joining this conversation.

“Is Dumbledore scared of Trolls then?”, asked Harry.

“Yeah, sure, why the fuck not”, muttered Farley.

“Then why didn’t you say so from the beginning? It must be hard on him, being as old as he is, to have a crippling phobia like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

Draco was furrowing his brows, “Harry I don’t think-“

“Shut up Malfoy”, Farley snapped.

Later that night Draco had trouble sleeping after all the excitement. It was already past midnight when he got up and started to gather some parchment to write to his father.

“Draco go to sleep”, Theo mumbled into his pillow.

“Can’t sleep”, he answered and settled into the room desk.

“Then turn off your stupid wand at least”, said Blaise.

“Can’t, I’m writing a letter.”

There was a collective groan in the dorm.

“No Vol, I’m not telling him that”, slurred Harry, evidently still the only person asleep, “Fuck that, I’m not doing that either. You’re no boss of me.”

“Merlin, did he have start talking in his sleep right this moment?”, groaned Theo and threw his pillow over his head.

“I don’t wanna know what you did when you were a kid”, Harry continued to slur.

Draco sighed and tried to focus on his letter.

“I’m not murdering anybody”, Harry slurred and changed the side he was lying on.

“Well that’s nice to know Harry”, snarked Blaise.

Crabbe and Goyle snickered at this, Theo groaned from underneath his pillow and Draco absentmindedly played with his quill feather as he thought about his letter.

Abruptly Harry sat up and slurred, “I’m not answering you, you’re a dick”, and proceeded to stand up.

Blaise, Goyle and Crabbe sat up as well, probably expecting to watch Harry stumble his way around in his sleep.

Draco wasn’t looked but when he heard them gasping he turned around and dropped his quill as he saw Harry wave at stuff lying on the floor and sent them floating into the air. He repeated this until he was inside their joined bathroom. The other boys in the dorm room all stood up and followed him, dodging floating shoes, socks and an errant pair of pants before they all peeked into the bathroom. It wasn’t much different. Soaps, shampoos and towels were lazily floating about the room and bumping into each other gently.

“What the fuck”, whispered Theo, as he too peeked into the bathroom.

They heard the sound of a toilet flushing and all hastily retreated into the bedroom proper, allowing a clear path for a clearly still sleeping Harry to get back to his bed. Fortunately his bed was the closest to the bathroom, so it wasn’t much trouble.

“You’re such a dramaqueen”, slurred Harry as he settled into his bed. They all waited in bated breath for a few seconds until Harry settled down and eventually fell back to sleep properly.

“ _What the FUCK_ ”, hissed Blaise in a whisper.

“Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh Merlin”, was all Theo seemed to be able to say.

“Wow”, said Goyle.

“Wow”, echoed Crabbe.

“We need to tell Professor Snape about this”, said Draco after a moment of internal panic.

The next morning, after barely sleeping anything at all, they all ran to Professor Snape’s office.

“What”, the man hissed as soon as he opened his door after they all almost knocked it off its hinges.

“Harry is a freak”, offered Goyle.

“Mr. Goyle that is uncalled-“

“Its true though!”, Interrupted Draco, “We all saw him get up in the middle of the night, he was talking in his sleep and never even realized we were there to see him and he was-he was _levitating stuff_ ”, Draco said, nerviously wringing his hands.

“As far as he walked stuff would just start to levitate and move out of his way and then when he went back to sleep proper it all just slowly got back to where it was”, fretted Blaise, “It’s the freakiest stuff I’ve seen in my whole life!”

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Merlin, that boy”, he muttered and then a stronger tone, “Get in here, quick. Maybe we can resolve this before you have to leave for classes. BINKY!”

A house elf popped into the room.

“Yous call for Binky?”, it squeaked.

“Go tell Gemma Farley she needs to bring Harry Potter to my office immediately.”

The house elf popped away and Severus motioned at them to take a seat as they waited.

“Sir, excuse me for asking, but would it be wise to alert Potter we know about this?”, fretted Theo after a moment.

Severus didn’t answer him and wouldn’t meet Draco’s gaze either.

“Wait a minute, you knew all along!”, accused Draco.

“Of course I did”, huffed Severus.

There was a knocking at the office door and Severus immediately allowed Harry in while they all gaped at him.

“Thank you Miss Farley, you are dismissed”, said Severus as he angled the door to cover the fact that any of them were in the office with him.

Harry blinked at them when he saw them, “What’s going on?”

“You, Mr. Potter, got up in the middle of the night and decided to give your dorm mates a bit of a show while you were still asleep”, sneered Severus, obviously not happy with the current situation.

“Oh”, said Harry as he looked at them with wide eyes and then back at Severus, “Oops.”

Severus gave a deep sigh of frustration.

“Are you even a Wizard?”, asked Theo, “Cause I’ve never seen anybody capable of that. Hell, I bet not even Dumbledore is capable of that.”

“I bet not even the Dark Lord was capable of that”, muttered Blaise.

“He wasn’t? That’s a shame”, said Harry nonchalantly and then added, “You know I don’t want to be the next Dark Lord, right? It sounds way too boring with way too little rewards.”

Draco observed how Harry’s left eye was twitching and wondered if this was a tell he was lying, but remembered that it mostly happened at random intervals throughout the day. Sometimes when Harry wasn’t talking to anybody.

“Yes, Mr. Potter is most definitely a Wizard Mr. Nott and no, nobody here thinks you’re going to become the next Dark Lord”, at that last part he gave them all a withering glare, daring any of them to say anything to the contrary.

“Nah, he likes Hermione too much. He won’t even call her a Mudblood. Can’t see him killing her”, Goyle said and Crabbe nodded along.

“Yeah”, Crabbe added and then said, “I’m hungry.”

“That’s a rude word”, said Harry, but he was grinning.

“Nobody is leaving until we can all agree that it is in Mr. Potter’s best interests that nobody outside of this group knows about his talents with wandless magic”, said Severus and gave them the same withering glare as before.

“Oh, like nobody is supposed to know my Dad likes to collect illegal lucky charms?”, asked Crabbe.

Severus held his head in his hands and answered with a slightly muffled voice, “Yes Mr. Crabbe, that is exactly what I mean.”

“Oh, okay, we can keep a secret”, Crabbe smiled, “Can we go eat now?”

Severus gave the rest of them a withering stare.

“I mean, what’s another secret”, said Blaise.

“I suppose”, grumbled Theo, “But Potter owes me”, he turned to Harry, “You’re not going to lie and say you don’t understand the homework again! I don’t care if you want to fake it to all the teachers, don’t fake it to us!”

“Yes!”, Draco piped up, “No more lying about the homework! You are doing a terrible job of it anyways. It’s a disgrace.”

Severus gave Harry an unimpressed look, “What did I say about this?”

“Oh come on! I’ve been trying”, Harry whined.

“That’s extra classes for you. Now you’ll come four times a week instead of three, at least until Christmas.”

Harry sighed despondently, “Yes Sir.”

Severus nodded, “Good. Are we all in agreement? Yes? Now go and don’t be late for classes.”

Crabbe and Goyle practically ran for it, while Draco, Theo and Blaise followed at a more sedate pace with Harry.

“I’m sorry I lied to you”, Harry said.

“Well, can’t say I’m happy about it, but it does explain a lot”, said Blaise and Draco and Theo nodded in agreement.

“You’re not going to tell your father, are you?”, asked Harry, looking at Draco.

Draco shrugged, “I guess you’ve been telling me not to tell him every single detail of my life, but-“, and now Draco had his finger in Harry’s face, “You don’t lie to me _ever again_! Friends don’t lie to each other.”

Harry smiled one of his dazzlingly bright smiles at Draco, “No they don’t”, he agreed.

Draco couldn’t help but smile back, feeling like despite all, he’d still accomplished his goal.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been getting people asking about what happened to Sirius, well, you'll have to see ~  
> huehuehuehue
> 
> Also, our favourite dragon gets introduced this chapter

Harry was shivering in his shoes as he trudged through the snow to get to the Hogsmeade platform to catch the Express.

‘Fuck this, we should have stayed at Hogwarts’, said Voldemort, ‘Fuck this snow.’

Being too busy shivering Harry decided to not deign his best friend with an answer. Especially when he kinda, sorta, maybe agreed with him.

“-and then after we finish our skiing trip at Switzerland we’ll move on to a weekend at Monaco at my father’s estate, we traditionally only go there in the summer, but mother insisted we make a quick stop-“

Draco was still prattling on about his Christmas vacations. In all honestly, Harry was more than done listening to his bragging, but he’d also gotten fairly used to it throughout the year. Besides, Harry was kinda fond of Draco and his melodrama. Never in all his life had Harry been pestered as much as Draco had been pestering him till he gave him some attention. Not even Voldemort in his worst throes of melodrama had been able to beat Draco. It was truly remarkable.

When they finally boarded the train Harry moaned in comfort and shook off some of the snow that had piled on his shoulders and such.

“Harry!”, Hermione greeted him with a smile.

“Hey Hermione, want to share with me and Draco the compartment?”, Harry offered. Draco made a funny face, but that was probably due to the cold.

“Sure”, said Hermione and soon the three were seated in their own compartment, happily chatting and away from the cold. During the ride Harry’s other Slytherin year mates came by to visit and coaxed Harry into games of Exploding Snap and one or two games of chess.

Harry wasn’t a big fan of chess because as soon as Harry accepted Voldemort would insist on calling all the shots. Voldemort was a really good player and Harry kinda wished he could also learn to be one someday, but he never got the chance to try the game by himself.

Upon arriving at Platform 9 ¾ Harry quickly bid his friends and yearmates good bye and went to fetch Jimmy from his Gryffindor friends. Harry was still very happy for his brother that he had been able to make a few friends. Seamus and Dean were decent enough too and often stood up for Jimmy when he got teased or insulted at school – which was a lot.

Sadly there wasn’t much Harry could do about that so he mostly just tried to be there for his brother when he needed him, like when he had that terrible broom accident.

“Jimmy! Harry! Over here!”, Harry saw James waving for them at the other end of the Platform and quickly guided his brother so that they could join him.

“I’m so glad to see you!”, said James happily and then pointed at Harry, “You and I are going to have a chat once we get home Mister!”

‘Ugh. Turn around and try to get back on the train, maybe we can sneak back into Hogwarts.’

Harry forced a nod and tried to look subdued all the way up till they were inside the Potter residence.

“My darlings!”, greeted Lily and gave them all a slight hug, careful not to upturn her martini.

“Hi Mom”, murmured Jimmy, looking genuinely happy to be back home.

“Excellent, Lily since you’re already here we can start right away with what Harry did at the beginning of his school year”, said James.

“Absolutely darling”, said Lily and sipped at her martini.

“Harry, I know you’ve had a very difficult time adjusting to the world of magic, but just because you feel like you might be behind on some things does not give you the excuse to cheat at school! And even if you are in Slytherin I expect you to be an honest person!”

‘Please kill me now.’

‘I can’t kill you, who will kill me then to free me from this?’, thought Harry.

“-been a family tradition of honesty, fairness and honour-“

‘Merlin he keeps going’, thought Harry in horror.

‘We should have tried to make Draco take us on his vacations. He’s obsessed enough with you that it might actually have worked.’

“-and I know what you’re gonna say, but that all sounds so Not-Slytherin, but hear me out-“

‘He’s not obsessed, he was just looking to make friends.’

‘Uh-huh, whatever you say.’

Lily was throwing olives that she got who knows where into her martini. Her glass was about to overflow.

‘Don’t be an ass, Vol.’

‘It’s only the truth.’

‘Nuh-uh.’

‘Yes it is.’

‘Nuh-uh.’

‘It is!’

‘Is not!’

Harry got disrupted by James placing his hand on his shoulder, “So you understand why I’m saying this?”

“Yeah, I’m also very ashamed of my actions. Professor Snape has been teaching me the error of my actions in my detentions”, said Harry as he nodded empathically.

James pulled a face, “Well, yeah, don’t take everything Snape says to heart, better listen to your old man, yeah?”

Stopping himself from saying ‘that’s Professor Snape to you’, Harry nodded as he bit his tongue.

“Brilliant, now lets have some delicious dinner, isn’t that so honey?”, he asked Lily.

“Sure hun”, Lily slurred and stumbled her way to the dining room.

The rest of the Christmas vacations were boring and uneventful for Harry. In all honestly most of the Wizarding World had become like this for Harry. Those few first days at Hogwarts before he was talked by Professor Snape into thinking about his safety and future had been the best Harry had lived since he left the orphanage, but ever since he’d barely had any sort of fun. There was no mischief or goal Harry was interested in at Hogwarts. Sure he had his new friends, which he actually liked and he had a twin brother that wasn’t half bad, but he still found himself feeling listless and without clear motivation.

Voldemort mostly approved of how things were doing. Sure, it was boring as hell, but it might help in the long run to convince Harry to turn his focus into becoming the next Dark Lord. According to him it was only a question of time.

When Harry was finally back in the Express on its way back to Hogwarts he breathed in relief.

‘Finally away from that thrice cursed house. Now go mingle with the other Slytherins, try to make some connections.’

‘We’re children, we don’t make connections.’

‘You’ve clearly not been paying attention to the inner workings of our House.’

‘I don’t really see much of a difference between the Houses, its mostly just sleeping arrangements and to help organize class schedules.’

‘I stand corrected, you’ve clearly not been paying attention to the inner workings of _any_ House.’

‘But there really isn’t that much to it!’

‘You innocent child.’

Harry turned to Draco, who was in the middle of a game of chess with Hermione, and asked, “There really isn’t that much of a difference between the Houses, is there? Except for, you know, sleeping arrangements and such.”

Both Hermione and Draco stared at him. Blaise, Theo, Pansy and Millicent stopped their game of Exploding Snap to also stare at him.

‘Told you so’, said Voldemort, sounding way more gleeful than what Harry thought was fair.

‘Oh shut up.’

“Harry-I-“, Draco paused, “Are you being serious?”

Harry pouted.

“Merlin, he’s serious.”

“Quickly, help me get my trunk open, I have Hogwarts A History in there”, said Hermione, completely abandoning her game of chess with Draco.

Draco didn’t even protest, but instead helped her get down her trunk.

By the time they finally arrived at Hogwarts Harry was sick and tired of getting Hogwarts A History read to him and from people singing the Sorting Hat song intermingled with the Official Hogwarts Song, which somehow had managed to be worse than a song composed by a literal hat.

* * *

Harry had been in the middle of taking Milly outside the castle for a bit of fresh air when he saw the giant that was always out and about on the grounds run out of the castle with a bunch of books towards a hut at the edge of the grounds.

“What’s he up to?”, he asked out aloud and was about to turn back to the castle when Milly jumped out of his arms and raced after the giant man.

“Milly come back!”, Harry shouted, “This world is way to cruel for you! Milly!”

By the time he caught up with her he was almost at the giant’s hut and Milly was visibly shivering.

“Oh no!”, wailed Harry and hurriedly went to knock on the hut’s door.

“Who is it?”, the door opened only a sliver, allowing Harry to see very little of the person behind it.

“Could you please spare a blanket or an old cloth for poor Milly? She’s all cold after she ran away into the snow and I’m afraid she’ll get sick. She’s only still a kitten!”

“Oh”, the door opened a little wider, “Come by the fire then, no worries.”

Harry smiled brightly, “Thank you Sir!”

The giant man waved him off, “Jus’ Hagrid, no need fo’ formality.”

Harry had the inkling that he would like this man as he stepped into his hut.

* * *

Harry poked a sleeping Draco in the side, “Draco”, he hissed.

Draco only grunted slightly in his sleep.

“Draco!”, Harry poked him harder.

“Wha-?”, Draco finally seemed to be awake, though only just barely, judging by the way he was looking blearily at Harry.

“Draco, I may or not need your help”, said Harry, remembering his lessons about Slytherin communications.

“Wha-?”

“Draco this is imperative, I need you to cover for me in the morning. I’ll owe you a one. I don’t even know what one I’ll be owing you, but I’ll owe it nevertheless. This follows your Slytherin principles, right?”

“Huh?”

“Brill, I’ll be seeing you by mid-morning’s time. Cheers”, and then he was off. Norbert needed him.

Norbert was currently in the stage that he was consuming brandy mixed with chicken blood by the bucket. Harry was there to help him as much as he could. Also to play with the playful baby dragon, who really enjoyed chasing Harry around the hut and falling asleep in Harry’s arms as soon as he tired himself out.

Voldemort was constantly protesting the current state of affairs, but Harry had fallen hard for the little adorable baby dragon.

“Who’s a precious wittle baby?”, Harry cooed that morning after he’d fed Norbert his latest bucket of chicken blood with brandy.

‘That thing is going to bite you and when that happens don’t come crying to me!’

“I’ll see you during lunch break baby”, Harry cooed as he let the baby dragon rest in the nest Hagrid had made for it.

“See ya’ later ‘arry”, Hagrid waved as Harry quickly and silently exited the hut and swiftly made his way up to the castle.

Harry walked up to Draco just before he had to enter the Charms classroom, “Hey”, he greeted.

Draco swivelled around immediately, “What the hell Harry?!”, he hissed, “Where have you been?! We had to tell McGonagall that you’re feeling under the weather!”

“Thanks mate”, Harry grinned and filed into the classroom with his yearmates.

“Where have you been?”, Draco hissed once more as soon as they were both seated together.

“I’ll show you after classes, we’ve been needing an extra hand anyways.”

“What? Extra hand? Harry what are you up to?”, Draco looked preoccupied.

“Don’t worry Draco, its nothing bad”, Harry smiled reassuringly at him.

Draco didn’t look reassured.

“What the fuck Harry.”

Draco wasn’t reassured when he first laid eyes on Norbert either. Harry wasn’t sure why.

“Lookit Norbert, this is your new friend Draco, geddit? You almost share a name baby!”

Norbert responded by almost setting Harry’s sleeve on fire.

Harry had to put the dragon down to pat down the fire. When he looked back up Draco was looking at him funny.

“That’s baby Norbert, he’s still a baby. That’s why he needs loads of care. Come, help me give him his evening bucket of chicken blood and brandy solution.”

Draco looked downright horrified at this, but Harry was nothing if not stubborn when it came to that caretaking of his pets so with some coaxing and cajoling Harry was able to teach Draco how to properly feed a baby dragon before it was curfew.

“You did a really great job”, Harry was congratulating Draco as they made their way back to the castle, “I’m sure that by tomorrow you’ll barely spill anything, nor shriek whenever Norbert sneezes at you.”

“He sneezes fire!”, wailed Draco, “That thing is a monster! They’re illegal!”

Harry snorted, “No being is truly a monster. Besides, how can a dragon be illegal?”

“You can’t have a dragon, that’s what’s illegal!”

“Yeah, but we’re not keeping him, we’re only gonna raise him.”

Draco covered his face in his hands and gave a muffled scream.

Harry patted his shoulder.

The next day when Harry was dragging Draco back for the second time that day to the hut they came across Hermione and Draco launched himself on her.

“Please help, he’s lost his mind and no matter what I do or say he’s not listening to me!”, said Draco, acting forever like a drama queen.

“What? Draco what’s happening?”, Hermione asked as she held Draco by the shoulders. She narrowed her eyes at Harry, “Harry what did you do to him?”

“Nothing! But I guess I can show you my secret, we need more help anyways. He keeps getting bigger every day.”

“He? What?”

Two days later Harry was forced to drag his twin brother out of the library and down to Hagrid’s hut.

“PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF MERLIN TALK HIM OUT OF THIS!!”, shouted Draco the moment he saw Jimmy, latching on to him like he was his only hope and salvation.

Hermione, who had been stirring a bucket of chicken blood and brandy, winced when she heard the shouting, “Keep quiet!”, she hissed, “You know he just fell asleep and he gets cranky when he gets woken up rudely!”

Jimmy blinked at Draco, then Hermione and finally settled on Norbert, whose nest had been upgraded by Harry, Hermione and Draco the day before and was now double the size it used to be to reflect the current size of its occupant.

“Harry?”, Jimmy asked, sounding unsure.

“We need you to pluck these chickens”, said Harry as he held out three dead chickens to Jimmy.

A few hours later they were all sat on the floor of the hut, watching Norbert down three buckets of chicken blood and brandy in a row.

“Harry”, Jimmy started, hesitated and then continued, “Why can’t we just tell somebody so they can take Norbert to other dragons?”

Hermione sighed, “Here we go again.”

“Because of Dumbledore”, said Harry seriously, “What is Dumbledore known for Jimmy? Aside from defeating Grindelwald?”

“Um, his work with Nicholas Flamel?”

“No! Well, yes, but aside from that what did he do?”

“Um, oh! He discovered twelve uses for dragon blood!”

“Exactly! If he were to find out about Norbert what do you think he would do to my poor baby?! He’d tap him dry! And then he’d put out some new use or two for dragon blood and nobody would be the wiser of the death of an innocent baby!”

“I keep tellin’ yeh Dumbledore would never do tha’”, said Hagrid from where he was opening another crate full of brandy bottles.

“Hagrid, I think we can all agree you’re too pure and innocent for this world”, declared Harry.

“Uh, thank yeh?”

Jimmy looked at Draco and Hermione, who looked more resigned than anything else and figured there was nothing else he could do or say, so he simply settled on, “Okay.”

For the next week whenever somebody asked Harry what he was doing he would immediately draft them to help in the caretaking of Norbert. Harry was mostly taking the night shift though, since the larger Norbert grew the more he needed a firm hand to help reign him in.

Harry set Spot loose on Norbert once or twice while Hagrid was out murdering chickens by the dozen and after those occasions Norbert quickly learned to respect Harry and would only rarely try to bite and burn him.

By the month mark of this Pansy one day demanded, “What have you all be doing?! Its rude to exclude the ladies from your activities! We are no longer in the medieval ages!”

And since Millicent had nodded along Harry had happily taken them both to the hut. They needed people constantly on Norbert watch now that he was trying to hunt all the dead rats that they were throwing at him.

After Pansy had recovered from the horror of her first sight of what was going on inside the hut a few hours later she turned to Ron and asked, “And what the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Ron sighed as he threw Norbert another rat, “Me and Nev peeked through the window over there and Malfoy saw us. Then we got drafted into this.”

“I don’t know how we could leave after finding out what Dumbledore will do to Norbert if he ever sees him”, moaned Neville.

“Did you hear then he secretly uses what’s left of the dragons he experimented on as his stew?”, said Theo as he stood closer, more than willing to gossip if it meant he could have a respite of rat lobbing.

“They say he took up the habit to become stronger than Grindelwald”, gossiped Dean as he plucked the feathers off a chicken for Norbert’s evening bucket.

“I bet that’s how Hagrid got Norbert’s egg, he rescued it from Dumbledore secret stash of dragon eggs”, mused Seamus, also plucking feathers.

“That’s awful”, said Crabbe as swept away the feathers littering the floor.

Millicent and Pansy nodded, both looking horrified.

“I keep tellin’ yeh tha’s not true”, said Hagrid from where he was bandaging his leg where Norbert had bitten him that morning when he mistook his leg for a dead rat.

“Ignore him”, mouthed Harry at the others and went to open another crate full of dead rats.

By the end of the next week most of the Norbert caretaking had to put on halt since there was barley space left inside the hut for more than one child. Hagrid was sleeping in his pumpkin patch along with Fang by this point. The situation was critical.

“Okay folks, this is it, what we’ve been working so hard for. It’s time to set Norbert free”, announced Harry in front of the hut on one Saturday morning.

Draco promptly burst into tears. Harry patted his back, “I know it’s hard to let him go, but it’s for the best.”

“I’m _free_ ”, choked Draco through his sobs.

“This is great”, said Ron, “My brother Charlie can help us with this, he works at a dragon reservation.”

“What? Your brother’s all the way in Romania, it’d never work out. What we’re gonna do is let Norbert loose in the Forbidden Forest. Now, who volunteers to help me wrangling Norbert to the Forest? Hagrid is going to be busy opening and closing his hut’s wall so we won’t be able to count on him right away.”

There was silence.

Harry furrowed his brows in confusion, “Is this the Gryffindor bravery talking or the Slytherin cunning talking? I’m confused.”

‘You’re a moron.’

“What?”, blurted Ron.

“Oh! Gryffindor bravery it is then!”, Harry clapped his hands and grinned, “You guys will be in charge of the wrangling, while the Slytherins are lookout.”

Dean, Seamus, Hermione and Neville gave Ron a look that made him shrink into himself. Jimmy just looked extremely worried.

“For now you can all go rest, but I want you all back by sundown. Have a big lunch, you’ll need it.”

Crabbe and Goyle grunted and immediately left for the kitchens if Harry knew them at all.

‘This is a terrible plan.’

‘Shush, Norbert deserves freedom.’

‘Harry – _no_.’

‘Harry yes.’

“Harry-“, Hermione started.

“Harry yes!”, he said and then caught himself, “Oh, I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

Hermione blinked at him, “Um.”

Harry smiled encouragingly at her.

“Nothing”, she said, “See you tonight.”

That night things went off surprisingly easy. As soon as Hagrid had made enough space for Norbert to get out of the hut he jumped out and followed Harry, who was holding a giant piece of steak in his arms, extra bloody just for this occasion.

The Gryffindors quickly contributed to chasing Norbert towards the Forest and after Harry and the giant bloody steak.

Harry went as deep into Forest as he dared and dropped the steak and then made a hasty retreat, leaving Norbert to explore his new home.

“That went swimmingly!”, enthused Harry, beyond happy with the results as he and his whole team of caretakers made their way back to the castle.

“I can’t help but feel like the other shoe is about to drop”, mused Draco.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Draco”, said Ron, making a face at his own statement.

“Nah, Norbert has his new home now. Nothing can go wrong now.”

About a week later the whole school was rocked by the mighty roar of a nearly fully grown dragon wreaking havoc in the Forbidden Forest.

“Well, will you look at that! Isn’t nature wonderful? A dragon has come to thrive in this forest all on its own! Isn’t that wonderful?”, said Harry in front of the whole class as they huddled close to the window to see several of the older trees on fire.

Draco was giving him that funny look again though.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So first order of business, this is now part of a series which will be divided by each of Harry's Hogwarts years that this story will play in.  
> Secondly, this is the last chapter of Harry's first year. I'll be uploading the first chapter of Harry's second year on Sunday if everything goes well. The story is already more than halfway written, so updates will be regular...at least for as long as I keep this pace up :x  
> Enjoy!  
> Also, your comments give me life :D

Minerva McGonagall had seen her fair share of things in her life. Yet this was still in the top ten of the list.

“LET THE DRAGON LIVE IN FREEDOM!”, Harry Potter was screaming through a Muggle megaphone that he had gotten Merlin knows where in front of the crowd of journalists, school staff and students gathered to observe the officials of the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau enter the Forbidden Forest.

Ever since the dragon had made its first fiery appearance the school had been in turmoil. Several parents sent Howlers to complain, Dumbledore was on the floo on a daily basis with the Ministry and the school staff had their hands full trying to keep the students out of the Forbidden Forest and away from the dragon.

It was putting a huge amount of stress on everybody, Minerva had just seen two weeks ago how Quirinus burst into tears in the middle of the staff meeting when Dumbledore had stressed how it was a death sentence to currently brave the Forest.

Soon the press had also arrived and if not for the wards they would probably had tried to sneak in to try take a few photographs of the dragon.

It really wasn’t an easy scenario, but then Harry Potter had to get himself involved.

At the beginning he would only talk loudly in public places how the dragon was a marvel of nature and how wonderful it all was, but then when the Daily Prophet started reporting that there were people who wished to see the dragon executed he completely changed his tactics.

It had all started with giving impassioned speeches about dragon rights in the middle of corridors, the Great Hall, at classes, at detention for disrupting classes, at the boy’s bathroom, at _girl’s bathroom_ – which got him another detention in which he also gave impassioned speeches – and finally at the school grounds.

What was worst is that his theatrics had got other students’ attention and now he had a group of roughly forty students, from various years – though mostly first years – joining his protests at the grounds and also making a nuisance of themselves. The worst of all was that the press had taken notice of them. Upon their first allowed incursion into the school grounds to document the proceedings of the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau they’d easily spotted Potter standing on top of a crate that smelled suspiciously of dead rats as he gave one of his infamous speeches.

The press loved him, but they loved him even more when he realized he was The-Twin-Brother-Of-The-Boy-Who-Lived and instantly put him on their cover pages. Having the actual Boy-Who-Lived appear at the protests instead of just his twin also helped the cause a lot.

Worst of all was that Potter had somehow managed to drag poor Hagrid into all of this. Though to be honest it probably wasn’t so difficult. Minerva, like everybody that knew the man knew he was overly fond of dangerous creatures. Hagrid had even participated in the contest to name the dragon, in which Potter had put out a blackboard on the grounds and accepted name suggestions for the dragon from the public. Hagrid’s proposal of naming it ‘Norbert’ ended up winning, even if there were many accusations of cheating since many believed the name ‘Dragoney McDragonface’ would be the winner.

As the first official of the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau entered the Forest the protests ramped up in noise, Potter clapping two pans together while he screamed, “ALL DRAGONS DESERVE FREEDOM!”, his megaphone at least for now forgotten.

Hagrid was playing the ukulele, or at least he was trying to. He’d commented to Minerva that Potter had convinced him that all peaceful protesting should have ukulele playing so he’d decided to volunteer.

“Sweet Merlin”, said Filius as he held his hands over his ears.

“Where did he even get those pans?”, wondered Minerva, only barely restraining herself of following Filius example.

“Where did they get the ukulele?”, wondered Sinistra.

“Oh look at the nice floral arrangement the children of the fifth year did!”, enthused Pomona as she pointed at the flower arrangement that said older students were making to float up in the air. The arrangement read ‘Freedom for Norbert’.

The fifth years seemed to be having a blast by making the letters float around their little gathering of protesters. One of them sent up an arrangement that formed the word ‘McDragonface’ and tried to replace ‘Norbert’ in the air, but Potter dropped his pans and tackled him before they could get further.

Hagrid gave his ukulele to Malfoy – perhaps the most surprising member of the little ragtag group – and ran to pick Potter up before it could all come to blows.

Just as Minerva was starting to think she should step in the ground Potter for tackling his fellow student and not letting them go afterwards there was a loud roar in the Forest, followed by screaming and then finally the officials of the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau came running out, making a beeline for the school gates.

Potter immediately stopped harassing the fifth year student and gave a cry of victory.

“NORBERT IS FREE! NATURE HAS PREVAILED!”

“I’m not even going to get into the argument that a Norwegian Ridgeback is never going to naturally appear in Scotland. The temperature here is far from what it would consider ideal”, said Filius as he shook his head at everything that was happening.

“Oh, his argument is that they are getting displaced out of Norway by us humans, who I might add he calls the true plague on the earth”, explained Pomona.

“Charming little fella isn’t he?”, joked Filius with a chuckle and began to amble back to the castle with the rest of the teachers.

Minerva sighed and followed along, “Has anybody seen Severus? I worry about him. Ever since Potter got sorted into his House he’s almost all the time exhausted and the fact that he couldn’t talk Potter out of his protests was a huge blow on his pride.”

“It was foolish of him to attempt it though, I’m sorry to say”, said Sinistra.

Minerva couldn’t help but nod, “He is a very difficult child. Thank Merlin I got his brother.”

“How’s Jimmy doing lately? I saw him come out of his corner in the classroom on his own the other day and I couldn’t help but be amazed”, said Pomona.

“Oh, it’s all this excitement of the dragon. Whatever Harry is, he’s good for his brother. Really helps to bring him out of his shell, even it is by giving him overexposure to other people.”

“Harry does have a big circle of friends”, mused Filius, “Almost unusually so.”

Minerva hummed in agreement, “Who’s up for some poker later tonight?”

“Ooh, that would be delightful, I do enjoy crushing all of you”, said Pomona.

“I’ll bring the Firewhiskey”, said Sinistra.

The next day the Daily Prophet’s cover story was how the officials of the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau, while trying to restrain Norbert the dragon, got ambushed by Centaurs and were forced to retreat.

It also reported that no more raids on the Forest were planned for the foreseeable future.

* * *

Harry was seated in Professor Snape’s office, practicing how to sit his final exams.

“How about I fake trying to cheat off Draco?”, Harry asked as he chewed on the end of quill.

Professor Snape made a face, “Don’t put that in your mouth, it’s uncouth. And no, no cheating, fake or otherwise. You’ll be under enough scrutiny as is.”

Harry sighed and took the quill out of his mouth, “Fine, fine.”

“What has you so distracted?”, Professor Snape asked after a while, in which Harry had done little more than stare into the distance.

Setting down his quill Harry sighed again, “There’s something weird going on with Jimmy. He told me recently that Professor Quirrel is evil.”

Professor Snape looked alarmed by this, “Did he say what gave him that impression?”

“No, just that he was evil and about to steal something. Seamus seemed to agree with him. Dean not so much, but Dean is the most sensible out of all of them”, Harry sighed again, “And Dean got sick yesterday, he’s at the infirmary now, so who knows what Jimmy and Seamus are up to now.”

Professor Snape abruptly stood up from his chair, “When was the last time you saw your brother?”

“Um, about before I came here? That’s when he told me about the whole stealing thing and that nobody was listening to him and then he and Seamus went off. They didn’t look too happy – Professor where are you going?”, Harry called after Professor Snape as he raced out of the office.

‘Maybe he really needed to go to the bathroom’, suggested Voldemort.

“Well, he could just have said something”, mumbled Harry out loud, not bothering to hide Voldemort’s existence when they were alone, “Hopefully he’ll get back soon. I still want to ask him if he could tutor Jimmy in Defense so that he won’t feel the need to slander teachers to get a good grade.”

‘Well, Quirrel is a terrible teacher, there’s no denying that.’

“Yeah, but he’s not a criminal”, said Harry.

After Professor Snape didn’t come back for the better part of an hour Harry left him a note on some parchment and went to the library to fake his studying for his final exams.

It was just about dinnertime when Gemma Farley came to the library for him.

“Your brother is at the infirmary”, she informed Harry, “Your parents are already here. Professor Snape said you should also be there.”

Harry hurriedly packed up his things and raced to the infirmary.

He found Jimmy laid up in a bed, covered in bandages and his right arm in a casket and James fawning over him. There was also a woman with bright red hair sitting at his bedside. She wasn’t saying much, but when she looked around and presumably didn’t find Madame Pomfrey in the near vicinity she opened her robe and took out a martini glass.

‘Oh! It’s Lily!’, said Harry.

‘Did he fall off his broom again?’, wondered Voldemort.

“You can come closer Harry”, Dumbledore called. Harry hadn’t even seen him, but now that he looked he saw Professors McGonagall and Snape coming out of Madame Pomfrey’s office, followed by the mediwitch herself.

“Mrs. Potter, is that a martini?!”, exclaimed Madame Pomfrey when she came to stand at Jimmy’s bedside.

“Um”, said Lily, looking a bit frazzled before she took a long sip of her martini, not looking at anybody present at the infirmary.

“What happened?”, asked Harry as he came to stand by Jimmy’s bedside.

“Young Jimmy here uncovered the most nefarious of plots that our very own Professor Quirrel had come to device to steal a precious object under Hogwarts protection. To do this he and Mr. Finnigan courageously went through all the obstacles that had been put in place to protect this very item and successfully managed to defeat Quirrel before he could steal it. Never before had such courage been witnessed before.”

Both Professor McGonagall and Snape looked at Dumbledore in clear bewilderment.

“The chess pieces only let him through because he was crying Albus!”, hissed Professor McGonagall.

“Crying requires great courage Minerva”, answered Dumbledore.

“Mr. Finnigan set himself on fire when he was trying to escape the Devil’s Snare!”

“He braved his greatest fear.”

“Albus!”

“My sweet son, so brave!”, wailed James over the still unconscious Jimmy, “I knew he’d be the best Gryffindor!”

“Sure hun”, slurred Lily as she swayed where she sat.

Professor Snape flared his nostrils, turned in a way that made robes twirl dramatically and left the infirmary.

“But I don’t understand. Professor Quirrel wasn’t a criminal”, said Harry.

“Alas, my dear Harry, he was. We were all deceived by him. None of us saw this coming. At all.”

Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes.

‘Well, at least this means you’ll have a better teacher next year.’

“Okay”, said Harry, “Is Seamus okay? And is Dean still here?”

“Mr. Finnigan is over here”, Professor McGonagall guided Harry to a curtained off area where both Dean and Seamus were resting on their respecting beds.

“Hey! Harry, how’s Jimmy”, greeted Seamus, who was red as a tomato on the few patches where his skin peeked through the bandages.

“He’s asleep”, said Harry and went to sit on his bed, “What happened exactly?”

“Oh, just these two”, sighed Dean, “They’ve been at it the whole year, driving me up the wall with their conspiracy theories and whatnot. I would have gone with them though, really, I would have. But then I really started to feel under the weather yesterday, just when the plan to stop Quirrel was taking off too! In fact, I still feel a bit peaky”, Dean coughed twice into his closed fist.

Harry stared at Dean.

Dean stared at Harry.

Harry could see sweat beading on Dean’s forehead.

“Okay. Hope you both get better soon!”, Harry said and went back to his brother’s side.

‘He’s so faking it.’

‘Totally.’

**Author's Note:**

> All comments are welcome, I'm writing as fast as I can so you might spot some grammar errors. Please don't hesitate to tell me! :)  
> Also, this is still under its working title, any and all suggestions for a new name are welcome


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